Use your noodle

India needs more bureaucratic interference in its economy. Right;

The packets of Nestle's Maggi 2-Minute Noodles that triggered India's worst food scare in a decade almost got lost in the post [office].

Returned months later to the north Indian food inspector who first sent the samples - after a detour via Shimla in the Himalayas - the consignment eventually reached a laboratory in Kolkata, where tests found seven times the legal levels of lead.

With inspectors so skilled--after they finally got them to the lab the packets were opened and sat around, exposed to the elements, before the tests were conducted--naturally, Thomson Reuters wants them to have more power;

The scare over Maggi instant noodles, one of India's most popular snacks, has gripped increasingly health-conscious consumers.

It has also highlighted shortcomings in the country's food safety network.

Uttar Pradesh, where the crisis began, has a population the size of Brazil's but the state's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has only five laboratories - or one per 40 million people.

Asked by the central Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) to run checks, FDA officials in another state did not know the lead limit, FSSAI head Yudhvir Singh Malik said.

"We need to strengthen the food safety infrastructure," Malik told Reuters.

Because that's where his paycheck comes from.