A four-member fact-finding committee, headed by BCS Deputy General Manager Jahirul Hoque, is to submit a report today.

The incident greatly dented the image of the Tk 150 crore catering service, prompting the authorities to send food samples to two testing laboratories, including the ICDDR,B. The authorities have decided to make public the findings today, said a top BCS official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Biman flight, BG-036, took off from Jeddah in the morning with 264 passengers on board, but about 35 fell sick two hours after having boiled rice, mutton and pulses soup. Many started throwing up, prompting the flight crew to alert the ground and provide first aid, said the official.

Armed with ambulances, wheelchairs and doctors, the ground staff at Zia International Airport (ZIA) treated the sick passengers of the aircraft that touched down at 11:45am on Friday.

"If it were food poisoning then 80 percent of the passengers would have fallen sick," the official added.

"Our own hygiene report found nothing wrong in the food sent from the catering centre. The same food did not affect others in the flight and the same food was sent to other flights including Riyadh-Dhaka and Hong Kong-Dhaka."

"There was no report of any untoward incident. This makes us believe that something went wrong with the food in the flight," he said.

The BSC's reputation is all the more at stake as it supplies food to a dozen international airlines. "We have immediately informed them of the incident because we don't want to leave them with any doubt about whether we are doing something about it or not," said the official.

"We will make sure that we get to the root of the problem so that this does not happen again," he said.