The CEO of Swiss food group Nestle said yesterday that a recall of baby milk products in Europe would create absolutely negligible costs and that the issue was a "storm in a teacup".
Chief executive and chairman Peter Brabeck said that the recalled milk products, which contained traces of ink from packaging, posed no risks to health.
The world's biggest food and drink company, on Tuesday ordered the recall of liquid baby milk in four European countries after the discovery that some of its products had been contaminated by a chemical used in the packaging.
The products are sold in Italy, Spain, France and Portugal.
Italy's forestry guard, a police force that comes under the agriculture ministry, earlier revealed that it had been told to impound 30 million liters of the company's milk products that had been distributed throughout the country.
Agriculture Minister Gianni Alemanno said, "The problem also concerns the rest of Europe, where the packages under suspicion are produced and where confiscations have not yet been set in motion."
Nestle said it believed the levels of the substance found so far did not represent a health hazard. The European food safety authority in Parma has been asked by the European commission to carry out tests on the chemical, but a spokeswoman said the results of its inquiry would not be ready until about next April.
Spain's health ministry yesterday admitted that the contamination had been caused at a factory in Sevares, in the northern region of Asturias. It said the contamination had been due to a chemical used by Tetra Pak, a Swedish company, in printing on the milk containers.
"Nestle withdrew all its units from the Spanish market in September and stopped production at its factory in Asturias," a ministry statement said.
The type of printing used was changed before production restarted in October. The Nestle milks now on sale in Spain were safe, said the Spanish health ministry.
"In any case, the potential health risk would be very low, both because of the kind of substance involved and because of the low proportions of it found in the product," it added.
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