In a move to curb down the consumption and sale of contaminated food, Food Safety and Standards Authority of India has issued a warning to both business operators and consumers. The move came just after it received an alert from the International Food Safety Authorities Network (INFOSAN) with regards to the contamination of infant milk formula with Salmonella Agona.
The formula has been manufactured by France’s Lactalis Group, and its symptoms include abdominal cramps, diarrhoea and fever.
According to INFOSAN, French authorities recently advised the withdrawal and recall of 12 batches of the implicated product. A few days later, the recall was expanded to over 600 batches that were manufactured between February and December 2017.
They identified 40 countries to whom the affected product was imported and were being informed about the Salmonella infection.
These include Afghanistan, Algeria, Andorra, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, China, Congo, Cote D’Ivoire, Gabon, Georgia, Greece, Guinea, Haiti, Hong Kong SAR (China), Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Madagascar, Mali, Morocco, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Seychelles, Spain, Sudan, Switzerland, Taiwan (China), Togo, the Netherlands, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates, Vietnam and Yemen.
As per the FSSAI notice, there was no report of any import of the contaminated infant formula product to India, yet there could be a possibility of this product reaching the consumers through online sales or by other means. Therefore, a notice has been issued to the public and various stakeholders, so that any inadvertent consumption of the infected products is avoided.