Nestle tanks 6 per cent as FSSAI says no clean chit to Maggi
Mumbai: Shares of Nestle India tumbled nearly 6 per cent on Thursday, after food safety watchdog FSSAI said it has not given any clean chit to the company's banned Maggi noodles as it rubbished all-clear reports from two of its empaneled labs, citing lapses in tests. The stock reacted, plunging 5.42 per cent to Rs 6,461.15 on BSE. On NSE, it slumped 5.67 per cent to Rs 6,450.
The stock had rallied 8 per cent yesterday following reports that the FSSAI-approved laboratory of Central Food Technological Research Institute (CFTRI) found Maggi noodles in compliance with the country's food safety standards. Meanwhile, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India yesterday rejected findings of the Food & Drugs Laboratory of Goa as well as CFTRI, Mysore, over test discrepancies. It also cast doubt on the clean chit to Maggi noodles by UK and Singapore labs, saying the Swiss food giant has not shared details of foreign test reports.
Rubbishing tests done by the Goa lab, the food regulator said food analysts at the lab had "wrongly taken the permissible limit of lead as 10 parts per million as against the actual maximum permissible level of 2.5 ppm". On the report of CFTRI on the same sample, FSSAI said the Mysore lab had not tested the noodles for the banned MSG. "It is clarified in the first instance that FSSAI has not given any clean chit regarding the safety of Maggi Noodles," it said in the statement that followed reports that the Goa and Mysore labs have found Maggi samples safe.