Principal Secretary and Food Safety Commissioner Om Prakash has stated the manufacturing, stocking, distribution and sale of Maggi instant noodles manufactured by Nestle India has been banned in Uttarakhand for a period of 90 days.
The ban has been imposed under the Sections of the Food Safety and Standards Act 2006 and Regulation- 2011 after samples of the product collected in the State have been found to be unsafe on examination.
The Food Safety Commissioner has issued directions to the food safety officers to undertake an intensive campaign to ascertain whether the food items being manufactured or sold in Uttarakhand meet the standards and are of the desired quality.
As part of this campaign, samples of various packed and unpacked food items sold/manufactured in the State including snacks, chips, noodles and all other fast food items should be collected and sent for examination in the State Food and Drug laboratory at Rudrapur.
Stringent action should be taken in case a sample is found to be in violation of the fixed standards, he directed.
Uttarakhand has joined the list of States to ban the sale of Maggi as the State Government acted on the negative laboratory test report involving the samples of the popular food product. However, defying the ban, some big retailers doing business in the Capital are still found trading in the banned product."We would enforce the order once we receive official orders from the higher authorities," said Dharmendra Singh, head of food department in Vishal Mega Mart, Dehradun.
Pulling Maggi off the shelf in the State has, however, spawned a question mark over other products of the same variety. "With the samples of Maggi having failed the laboratory test, it is imperative that other such products are subjected to the same laboratory test too," said Anoj Kumar Thapliyal,Dehradun food safety officer.
Meanwhile, several retailers have already started acting on the ban order. "We had stopped selling the product as soon as we got to know about the order through newspapers and television," said Vinod Gupta, who owns a departmental store in the city.
Ban on Maggi has affected the sales of other similar products as well with the people choosing to steer clear of such popular food stuffs, sensing danger lurking in them, he added.
Another retailer Anil Goyal said, "Application for the withdrawal of all the leftover stock of Maggi has been sent to the distributors." "People who already bought Maggi have started returning it," he added.
"We have stopped selling the product after getting the orders from our head office and we will return the leftovers at the earliest," said Menon, store manager at Easy Day, Dehradun. When asked what they would do with the product already purchased, a college
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U'khand bans Maggi for 90 days
student Pallavi Anand said it is better to throw them away or return them to the retailers. "Children are still attached to Maggi. So we are now providing them with other instant noodles," said a housewife Anita Sharma.
Pradeep Bhandari reports from Joshimath: The State authorities had banned the sale of Maggi instant noodles in Uttarakhand on Wednesday but this item is still being sold blatantly at shops in Joshimath, a prominent town on the pilgrimage circuit. On being asked about this, the Chamoli District Magistrate Ashok Kumar said that the district food safety officer has been told to collect Maggi noodles samples for lab test. The officer will also be told to check on the banned items still being sold in the market and the ban will be implemented, he added.
It will be recalled that after a sample from Pauri revealed more than permissible level of MSG, the instant noodles were banned in the State on Wednesday. The ban on its sale will stay in place across Uttarakhand till samples collected from all the districts are examined in the State Food and Drug Testing laboratory in Rudrapur.
However, on Thursday, a day after the sale of this instant noodles was banned, shops in Joshimath are openly selling Maggi noodles. The local administration appears to be negligent considering that no orders banning the sale of the instant noodles have been issued to the shopkeepers here. The traders state that they have no information about ban on sale of Maggi. They add that they will continue to sell the item unless it is recalled by the agency from where they brought it. Joshimath is a major stop for those travelling to Badrinath shrine and the Hemkund Sahib Gurudwara but the authorities have not been able to promptly impose the ban on the sale of Maggi.