Egypt's Food Safety Gives "Indomie" 48 Hours to Pull Product from Market

The Egyptian Public Authority for Food Safety announced that it had found proportion of aflatoxins and pesticide residues that exceed the safe limits allowed for human consumption, after testing samples of the indomie noodles product in the markets.

The authority added that the tests proved the invalidity of the chilli product, and the flavors of chicken and vegetables for human consumption and the validity of instant noodles for human consumption.

The authority stated in a statement Tuesday, that it immediately notified the company of the necessity to withdraw the product permanently from the market, within 48 hours, and not to attach the chilli product and non-conforming flavors to the product.

It noted that dealing with the company producing the chilli was stopped until corrective measures are taken to ensure that the product is free of contaminants and pathogens, pointing out that the chicken and vegetable flavors will not be sold with the indomie and that the product's packaging related to the benefits of vitamin B and mineral salts of iron, zinc and calcium will be removed.

It pointed out that the company responded immediately by withdrawing the product from the market, including 733,34 thousand cartons of different flavors, and is still withdrawing its products that do not comply with food safety requirements, and announced selling instant noodles without those chili flavors.

Indomie is a brand of instant noodle produced by the Indonesian company Indofood. Indofood itself is the largest instant noodle producer in the world with 16 factories. Over 15 billion packets of Indomie are produced annually.