The national standards body has cancelled licences for six food items and a skincare product marketed by nine companies in the last three months because of their substandard quality.

The food items belong to different categories, namely salt, soybean oil, turmeric powder, vermicelli, ghee, and chanachur (a salty and spicy crisp snack), according to a corrected statement of the Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institution (BSTI).

“Consumers are requested to refrain from buying the products,” the state-run agency said. 

Md Reazul Haque, deputy director for certification marks at the BSTI, said: “Sales and distribution of the products will be prohibited until the companies take fresh licences for these products.”

Earlier in the day, the BSTI had issued a press release, where it said it had revoked the licences of seven products of 13 firms. 

In the corrected statement, it dropped four names, saying the companies were included in the first press release mistakenly and they have already had the required licences.

“We will issue licences after the companies address the problems and improve the quality,” Haque said. 

The BSTI scrapped the licences after testing the products in its lab. The samples were collected from the market, the press release said.

Haque said the BSTI cancelled the certification marks licences for the products in the ‘last two to three months’.

But it made the information public yesterday as it thought that it would be good to do so if the number of licences revoked was higher, he said, adding that the agency is certain that these products are now out of market. 

He said the BSTI would not wait for the number to increase next time. “If we find two cases, we will issue notices for the two.”