On March 10, one Karunesh Shukla tweeted images of Nestle’s maggi flavoured with beef and urged social media users to boycott ‘Maggi’. It is being claimed that beef flavoured maggi is being sold to Indians. “Friends, now Maggi is selling products with our (mother) cow’s beef in it. A few days back Maggi wallahs were mixing lead with Maggi noodles and selling it to us (Indian). We have to teach these foreign companies a lesson. This Holi lets embrace Indian made products and boycott the foreign ones,” reads the message posted along with the images.
A similar claim is viral on Facebook and Twitter, which says, “मैगी में गोमांस का फ्लेवर डालना शुरू कर दिया 😡😡 मैं आज से मैगी का बहिष्कार करता हूँ, कृपया आप भी जो गाय को माता का दर्जा देतें हैं मैगी का बहिष्कार करें (They have started processing beef flavour in Maggi. I boycott Maggi from today. You too, please boycott Maggi if you consider cow to be our holy mother.)”
Fact-check
Nestle India took to Twitter and informed that maggi noodles sold and manufactured in India “does not contain beef or any form of flavour beef”.
Hi, we would like to inform you that MAGGI noodles manufactured and sold by Nestlé India does not contain beef or any form of beef flavor.
— We Care At Nestlé (@NestleIndiaCare) March 11, 2020
While a search on Nestle India’s website with keywords (“Maggi” and “beef”) bore no results, the same gave results for beef flavoured maggi on Nestle’s website for Maggi products in New Zealand, USA, Australia and UK. We found the same product listed on Amazon USA’s website.
Furthermore, it was found that the maggi India website includes chicken noodles.
Thus, the claim that beef flavoured maggi is being sold by Nestle in the Indian market is false.