FSSAI moves Supreme Court against clean chit to Maggi by High Court

Food regulator FSSAI on Monday moved the Supreme Court against the Bombay HC order in the Maggi noodles case seeking expunging of certain adverse remarks made against it.

The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India approached the top court, terming the HC’s August 13 order as “erroneous” and questioned the sanctity of the samples provided for re-test to labs.

In its petition, the FSSAI has contended that the HC “erred” by asking Nestle itself, to provide the fresh samples instead of asking a neutral authority to do so. The petition also sought expunging of adverse remarks made against the FSSAI officials by the HC. It also maintained that the authority should be allowed to use labs under the relevant law without insistence being placed on using only the government-accredited labs which were few and far between, FSSAI sources said. Earlier, the HC had quashed the orders of FSSAI and Maharashtra food regulator FDA, which had banned nine variants of Maggi noodles in the country. It had said that the principles of natural justice were not followed in executing the ban as the manufacturer was not given a hearing.

The court had allowed Nestle to go in for fresh testing of five samples of each variant of the noodles in three independent laboratories in Punjab, Hyderabad and Jaipur.