Nestle says has not been notified of any Maggi noodles issues in India

ZURICH (Reuters) - Swiss food group Nestle said on Friday it had not been informed by government authorities of any new health issues with its instant noodles after a newspaper reported tests had detected higher-than-permissible levels of ash in the product.

"We have not received any notice from the concerned authorities about samples of Maggi noodles collected from Umesh Chandra, Barabanki. We have also not received any notice from the court and we have heard about this only from a media report," a Nestle spokesman in India said.

The Wall Street Journal had cited food safety inspectors in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh as saying they had filed a lawsuit accusing Nestle of substandard practices after ash content in samples of its Maggi 2-Minute Noodles was found to exceed the legal limit.

The Indian unit of the Swiss food giant had been grappling with a public relations crisis that hit sales after local regulators reported last year that some packets of the Maggi noodles contained unsafe levels of lead. Sales resumed in November.

Nestle said on Friday its products were safe, adding it had come across instances in Uttar Pradesh in which standards for macaroni products were being applied for instant noodles with seasoning, which it called "erroneous and misleading".

(Reporting by Devidutta Tripathy and Michael Shields, editing by David Evans)