Maggie controversy

The crisis involving Maggi Noodles in India was so bad that several case studies have been made on it. It nearly threatened the existence of Nestle India as Maggi sales contributed to over 25 per cent revenues of the Swiss company’s India unit. It was in 2014 when food safety regulators from the Barabanki district of Uttar Pradesh reported that samples of Maggi Noodles had high levels of monosodium glutamate (MSG) apart from high lead content above the permissible level. At the time, the labelling on packets of Maggi Noodles indicated that it had no added MSG. An individual named Sanjay Singh, who was a food inspector in Uttar Pradesh government’s Food Safety and Drug Administration, spotted the label on the bright yellow Maggi packet that claimed “no added MSG” in March 2014 during one of his routine raids on retail outlets.When it was sent to a state laboratory in Gorakhpur for testing, it was found that the instant noodle packets had MSG. The samples were then sent to the Central Food Laboratory (CFL) in Kolkata a few months later. Almost a year later in April 2015, the CFL confirmed the Gorakhpur lab report and also confirmed that the amount of lead found was over 1,000 times more than what Nestle India Ltd had claimed.However, Nestle in its first official statement after the report claimed that there was no order to recall Maggi Noodles being sold and that it was safe to eat. However, the controversy grew when the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) asked Nestle to recall Maggi Noodles. Nestle was left with no choice but to recall the popular snack from the market. Between June 5 and September 1, 2015, nearly 38,000 tonnes of Maggi Noodles were recalled from retail stores across the country and destroyed. Maggi’s share in the Indian market went down from 80 per cent to zero.Five months after the brand was forced to pull out of the market over safety concerns,