Following the controversy on Maggi noodles for its alleged contaminants, the demand or sale of the product drastically dropped in the Tricity at around 40 to 50 per cent in the last couple of days.
People of the region have started avoiding purchase of Maggi for their kids at least till for the time being. In all the big departmental stores, the demand has fallen sharply, sales officials said.
Madan lal Gupta, a whole seller in Sector 44, said the overall demand for not only Maggi but also other noodles has decreased significantly.
He said earlier he used to sell more than 500 boxes of Maggi in a day, but due to anti Maggi news in media, people have refused to buy it and he hardly managed to sell 50 boxes in a day now.
Sunita Kashyap, a house wife residing in Sector 23 B Chandigarh, said “We can’t take risk with the health of our children. I threw out 20 packets of Maggi immediately after seeing news. We will not purchase until Government of India gives a green signal on it,” said Gurmeet Kaur, another resident of Sector 40, Chandigarh. Himanshu Manglik from Nestlé India ltd. Gurgaon, manufacturers of Maggi admitted about drastic fall in the sale of the said product, yet he assured that the product was good.
“We have submitted samples of Maggi Noodles from almost 600 product batches to an external laboratory for independent analysis and we tested samples from almost 1,000 batches at our accredited laboratory,” said Manglik.
He added that these samples represent around 125 million [12.5 crore] packets. All the results of these internal and external tests showed that lead levels were well within the limits specified by food regulations and that Maggi noodles were safe to eat. We were sharing these results with the authorities, he added.