Food safety officers collected noodle samples of various brands from a retail outlet in Ranchi on Monday after the central food safety regulator ordered lab tests of noodle, pasta and macaroni manufactured by other companies other than Nestle to check whether they were complying with safety norms.

Monday's action in the state capital was confined only to the Big Bazaar outlet located near Overbridge from where the team picked up four packets of Top Ramen, Hakka Noodles and Wai Wai egg variant.

The samples will be forwarded to Central Food Laboratory, Calcutta, for tests.

"Acting on directions from the state food department (under the health department), we expanded our sample collection drive and picked up four packets of Top Ramen, Hakka Noodles and Wai Wai egg noodle from a Big Bazaar outlet in Ranchi and forwarded them for lab tests," K.P. Singh, one of the food inspectors in Ranchi, confirmed to The Telegraph over phone in the evening.

"The idea is to go beyond Nestle and see if other companies were also violating food safety norms. There wasn't any fixed itinerary or brands in mind for collecting the samples. We just picked up packets randomly for fair sampling and testing," he added.

Last week, following a nationwide brouhaha over presence of lead beyond permissible limits and taste enhancer monosodium glutamate (MSG) in some packets of Maggi manufactured by Nestle, the state health department launched a sample collection drive across Jharkhand.

On Wednesday, around 18 packets of noodle and pasta of the Maggi brand were sent to Calcutta for tests.

Singh said the results were expected this week. "We are hoping to get the test reports by the end of this week or early next week," he said.

Asked whether similar drives would be carried out at other places in the state capital in the coming days, Singh said nothing had been finalised as of now.

"We are treating it as a routine exercise and will pick up samples regularly in the coming days as well to ascertain whether any law is being violated," he added.

On Monday, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) directed all states to also put noodle, pasta, macaroni and allied items offered by different companies under lab test.

Some of these brands are ITC, Indo Nissin Food Ltd, GSK Consumer Healthcare, CG Foods India, Ruchi International and AA Nutrition Ltd. It also asked the states to go beyond lead and MSG and also test presence of metal contaminants like copper, arsenic and cadmium.

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