A company official confirmed this to Herald saying, “You will get the good news very soon. We will definitely come back.”
Reacting to the development in the neighbouring states, Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar asserted that the State never imposed a ban. The product, he said, was recalled as a part of a pan-India move on instructions from Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) to the company.
“Since the beginning, our labs confirmed that (lead) content was within permissible limits. We did not impose the ban. There was no genuine reason to do so. Our analysis did not find anything objectionable,” he said.
The government, Parsekar further said, was amongst the last to ban the product based on FSSAI directions.
Deputy CM Francis D’Souza, who also holds the Health portfolio, shared a similar opinion.
Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) Director Salim Veljee also said the government had never banned Maggi in the State and added that the product would be back on shelves subject to a High Court order.
The Bombay High Court had asked Nestle India Pvt Ltd to go for a fresh test of samples in three independent approved laboratories across India. “They will have to submit fresh reports to the High Court based on which it will decide to lift the ban in Goa,” Veljee said.
In June, FSSAI had banned all variants of Maggi noodles terming them unsafe and hazardous for human consumption. Nestle recalled over 10,000 kg of nine variants of Maggi from the State.
However, the food regulator had found the noodles safe to eat based on reports from the Mysore lab that ascertained the lead content in five samples to be below the permissible limit and the level of monosodium glutamate was negative.
