An indigenous brand of instant noodles launched earlier this week by a company mentored by yoga guru Baba Ramdev and intended to compete with Nestle’s Maggi noodles has met controversy even before hitting the markets in India.
India’s apex food regulator indicated that Patanjali Ayurved’s instant wheat flour noodles did not have its mandatory approval, but the company has denied the claim, releasing documents from the regulator itself. The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) chairperson, Ashish Bahuguna, said the noodles launched by Patanjali Ayurved, a company mentored by Ramdev, did not have the regulator’s approval. “For instant noodles, they need to take prior approval – they have not taken it,” he said. “Patanjali has approvals for other products, but they do not have the approval for instant noodles. As of now, only 10 companies have approval for instant noodles,” Bahuguna added.
The company had earlier this week launched its instant vegetable atta (wheat) noodles, announcing its plans to sell the product nationwide in a phased manner beginning next month. Patanjali refuted Bahuguna’s claim, saying it has a licence to sell instant noodles.
“We have a licence for pasta in the central category from the FSSAI. Under FSSAI rules, noodles come under the pasta category, FSSAI has given us licence for relabelling in the pasta category,” the company said in a statement today. The company said it has signed agreements with various manufacturing companies that have licences to make noodles. On its launch day, Patanjali had indicated that it was manufacturing the noodles in plants across the country, without specifying the ownership of the plants. The company also cited a circular issued by the FSSAI earlier this year saying that it could not continue insisting on product approvals for certain categories of products.
The controversy prompted the Congress to poke fun at Ramdev who is widely seen as a supporter of the Narendra Modi government.
A Congress spokesperson “congratulated” the inventor of “noodle-asana”, describing it as a “way to violate every law and every norm”. “This FSSAI law is a 500-page document, but once you learn noodle asana, you don’t have to worry about the document,” said Abhishek Singhvi, the Congress spokesperson.
The FSSAI had earlier this week also petitioned the Supreme Court to block the return of Maggi noodles, challenging a Bombay High Court ruling that had allowed Nestle to test the noodles in accredited laboratories and bring them back if found safe for consumption. The FSSAI had in June this year banned the noodles after government laboratories found higher-than-permissible levels of lead in some samples. But Bombay High Court had pointed out that those laboratories were not accredited to look for lead in noodles, and ordered fresh set of tests. Nestle says all its samples have passed whenever tested in accredited laboratories.
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