The head of Nestle called a recall of millions of litres baby milk products in Europe a "storm in a teacup" today and said it would not burden results at the world's largest food company.
Chief executive and chairman Peter Brabeck said that the recalled milk products, which contained traces of ink from their Tetra Pak packaging, posed no risks to health.
"It's nothing. It's a storm in a teacup," Mr Brabeck told journalists at a Zurich business event. "There is no risk to safety."
Yesterday, Italian police seized around 30 million litres of baby milk produced by Nestle after tests showed it was contaminated with traces of ink used in the packaging.
Nestle said the chemical substance was not harmful, but announced it was recalling the infant food in Italy, Spain, Portugal and France because of the problem, which was related to Tetra Pak cartons.
Mr Brabeck said that the recall affected two million litres of liquid baby food in Italy. Italian authorities swept hundreds of packets of milk off supermarket shelves and out of depots around the country.
Police said they also searched lorries in their effort to root out the four Nestle products under investigation. The cost to the company of pulling the products off shelves would be €2 million to €2.5 million at most, an "absolutely negligible" amount, Mr Brabeck said.
But analysts said that the affair risked denting Nestle's image, even if it posed few risks to results.
"There must be a - however slight - risk to the Nestle brand in Italy, which is the company's fifth biggest market with sales of 4.4 billion francs," said analyst Jon Cox at Kepler Equities in a research note.
"We make no change to our estimates and continue to believe in the Nestle long term story. However, Nestle stock has had a strong run this year and profit taking seen yesterday could re-emerge today," Mr Cox said.