Business
Complaint filed after worms found in Nestle's Cerelac in Coimbatore
Chennai, June 16
Still fighting the Maggi
noodles crisis in court, Nestle India on Tuesday was hit by another
potential trouble-spot with a consumer filing a complaint with the food
safety watchdog saying that a packet of baby food Cerelac was found
infested with worms in Coimbatore.
"We have received a complaint
about a worm-infested packet of Cerelac. We have sent the packet for
tests. We will be collecting three more samples of the same Cerelac
variant and send it for tests," R. Kathiravan, the designated officer of
the food safety and drug administration, told IANS over phone from
Coimbatore, around 500 km from the Tamil Nadu capital.
M.S.
Sriram, the complainant, also told IANS over phone from Coimbatore: "We
bought the Cerelac packet on Sunday. It was opened only on Monday around
noon by my wife to feed our baby. To her shock, she found worms in the
powder and called me."
"The expiry date on the pack was printed
as February 2016. We always buy food products after checking the expiry
date," Sriram said.
He said he then called Nestle India's toll-free complaint number and got a "pathetic response".
"The
response I got at the toll-free number was horrible. Hence I decided to
take the issue further by making a complaint to the food safety
department," Sriram said.
Only after the issue escalated did Nestle India officials start acting.
"A
company official called me and apologised for what happened to me with
their product. He gave a new packet and said the company would also take
the issue forward by testing the samples," Sriram said.
According to Kathiravan, there was a remote chance of a properly packed product getting infested with worms.
Incidentally, this was the second such complaint in Coimbatore with Nestle India's baby food.
On June 2, a person said he found larvae and worms in a packet of Nestle's NanPro 3 milk powder.
"After
that complaint, we collected samples of that product from other shops
and tested them. The test results were positive for the company as they
were not contaminated," Kathiravan said.
He said the product would get infested with worms only when moisture enters the packet.
Nestle India officials were not immediately reachable for comments.