Nestle dips 5% as FSSAI rubbishes all-clear reports to Maggi

Mumbai: Shares of Nestle India plunged over 5 per cent on Thursday after the food safety watchdog FSSAI said it has not given any clean chit to the company’s banned Maggi noodles, while rubbishing all-clear reports from two of its empanelled labs citing lapses in tests. After falling 5.42 per cent to Rs 6,461.15 intraday trade at BSE, the stock finally ended at Rs 6,488.35, down 5.03 per cent from its previous close. At the NSE, shares of the company slipped 5.15 per cent to settle at Rs 6,486.10. [caption id=“attachment_2380502” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Nestle Maggi. AFP[/caption] The company’s market valuation dipped by Rs 3,312.11 crore to Rs 62,557.89 crore. The stock had rallied 8 percent on Wednesday 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, Food Safety and Standards Authority of India on Wednesday rejected findings of the Food & Drugs Laboratory of Goa as well as CFTRI, Mysore over test discrepancies. It also cast doubts over clean chits to Maggi noodles by the 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 the 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 the 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. PTI