Bihar collects 21 Maggi samples for tests

The food control administration in Bihar has collected 21 samples of Maggi noodles from different districts in the state and sent them to a private food testing laboratory in Kolkata to detect whether there was presence of monosodium glutamate.

The food control administration in Bihar has collected 21 samples of Maggi noodles from different districts in the state and sent them to a private food testing laboratory in Kolkata to detect whether there was presence of monosodium glutamate (MSG) and level of lead in the food item as alleged by a laboratory in Uttar Pradesh recently.

“The first lot of the samples were collected from Bhagalpur on May 23 and the last lot from Samastipur on Wednesday”, said food safety officer (HQ) Mukesh Kashyap.

He, however, refused to comment on the quality of the samples, saying nothing could be said with authenticity, unless they were tested in the laboratory.

The FSO said, since the state owned food testing laboratory at Agamkuan was not functioning, the samples were sent to Mitra SK Private Limited, Kolkata for examining the quality of the products.

He said the office of the state food safety commissioner, Anand Kishor had received a request from the Food Safety and Standards

Authority of India on June 1 for collecting the samples of Maggi noodles to detect the presence of MSG and lead in the food item.

After the examination of the samples, necessary action would be taken against the operators as per the provisions of the Food Safety and Standards Regulation, 2011, he said.