BSTI bans 22 more products found substandard in second round of tests

The Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institution has released a list of 22 more products found substandard in its tests.

It banned sale of the products and asked the companies on Tuesday to recall these from markets within 72 hours after conducting a second round of tests on 93 products.

These 93 products were among the 406 the samples of which the BSTI had collected secretly before Ramadan.

In the first round of tests on 313 products, 52 had been found substandard.

BSTI later lifted the ban on some of the products that were cleared in fresh tests.

The newly found substandard products include:

Powdered spice:

Radhuni Coriander and Cumin (Square Food and Beverage)  

Dairy:

Pran Premium Ghee (Pran Foods)

A-7 Ghee (Jamuna Chemical Works of Chattogram)

Green Mountain Butter Oil (Queen Cow Food Products of Chattogram) 

Lachchha vermicelli:

Kulson (Hashem Foods)

Madina (JK Food Product of Jhalakathi)

Salt:

Muskan (SA Salt)

Confidence (Confidence Salt of Chattogram)

Camel (Bismillah Salt of Chandpur)

Nazrul (Janata Salt of Chandpur)

BSTI has suspended licences of these products.  

It has also cancelled licences of Three Star Powdered Turmeric of Three Star Flour Mill and Khushbu Ghee of Agro Organic.

Eight more companies were marketing their products without BSTI licences.

The institution said it started cases against these firms, without naming any.   

In a notice publishing the names of the products found substandard, the BSTI asked everyone to stop production, marketing, sale and advertisement of these products until their standards are improved.

Asked about the BSTI notice, Square Food and Beverage Assistant Manager Rukhsana Begum told bdnews24.com: “We want to reassure the consumers and others that we always maintain local and international standards of our products. BSTI may conduct tests again if it wants to.”

None of several other companies that have their products on the new list agreed to comment.