Nestlé, the world’s largest food and beverage company, has sold Maggi (pronounced “MAG-ee”) in India for more than 30 years, and the brand’s ubiquity and cultural resonance on the subcontinent is something akin to Coca-Cola’s in the U.S. In 2014, Indians consumed more than 400,000 tons of the instant noodles—marketed in 10 varieties, from Thrillin’ Curry to Cuppa Mania Masala Yo!—and Maggi accounted for roughly a quarter of the company’s $1.6 billion in revenue in the country. That year Maggi was named one of India’s five most trusted brands. ... On June 5, 2015, less than a month after Khajuria’s phone rang in the middle of the night, India’s central food regulator announced a temporary ban on the manufacture, sale, and distribution of Maggi noodles. In its order the FSSAI pronounced Maggi “unsafe and hazardous for human consumption,” a designation supported by 30 government lab tests showing Nestlé’s noodles contained excess amounts of lead. ... The Maggi meltdown would prove costly. Nestlé lost at least $277 million in missed sales. Another $70 million was spent to execute one of the largest food recalls in history. Add the damage to its brand value—which one consultancy pegged at $200 million—and the total price tag for the debacle could easily be more than half a billion dollars. And the fallout continues. ... Nearly a year after the ban, Maggi noodles are back on shelves in India, but somewhat precariously so. The product’s future depends on two legal cases that are working their way through the Indian court system. Both pit Nestlé against the Indian government.

It will take at least three years for Takata and other manufacturers to make enough air bags to replace the company’s defective ones. Because of their chemistry, Takata’s devices become less stable over time. That leaves millions of drivers with cars that could contain an air bag that’s like a ticking time bomb. ... Takata, founded by the Takada family in the 1930s as a textile maker, produced parachutes for the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. In 1960, Takata began manufacturing seat belts for Japan’s carmakers, which were leading the country’s industrial expansion. It was the only company whose seat belts passed the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) crash test standards in 1973. ... Air bags deploy in controlled explosions. Their designs are drawn from rockets and munitions. A former Honda engineer, Saburo Kobayashi, described Takada’s reservations in a 2012 memoir. “If anything happens to the air bags, Takata will go bankrupt,” Takada said, according to the book. “We can’t cross a bridge as dangerous as this.” Eventually, he relented. ... Lillie says he left Takata in 1999, partly because the company ignored his warnings about ammonium nitrate. He says Takata’s executives and workforce were unprepared to take on such a difficult design and manufacturing process. “Takata engineers claimed they had this magic,” he says. “No one else could figure it out, and they had.”