Various media accuse Chinese companies of making rice by mixing potatoes with a synthetic resin. This “rice” is cheap but highly profitable. However, the resin is hard to digest and is like eating plastic. Food safety scandals have rocked the country on several occasions.
Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) – China is accused of making rice with “plastic”. The country has a long poor food safety record, including poisoning and death.The Weekly Hong Kong reported that fake rice was sold in the Chinese town of Taiyuan, in Shaanxi province, made by mixing potatoes, sweet potatoes and industrial synthetic resins.
Although the rice reportedly stays hard even after cooking and is hard to digest, production costs are very low and profits very high. A Chinese Restaurant Association official said that eating three bowls of this fake rice would be like eating one plastic bag. An investigation is apparently underway into the affair.
China has a very poor food safety record. The worst case involved milk baby formula made with melamine, a plastic compound bad for human health. Six infants died from drinking the milk, whilst more than 300,000 suffered kidney problems, some very severe.
The scandal broke out in September 2008; however, the authorities had known about it for months but kept silent to avoid bad publicity that might affect the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
In July 2010, the Global Times reported that a company in Xi'an, Shaanxi, was involved in a simpler kind of fraud by adding flavouring to ordinary rice and selling it as the more expensive ‘Wuchang rice’ brand.
Chinese authorities have repeatedly sentenced dishonest business people to long prison terms, but have proven unable to guarantee food safety.
The Chinese food contamination freak show is back in full swing with new reports out of Singapore indicating that certain Chinese companies are now mass producing and selling fake rice to unwitting villagers. According to a report in the Korean-language Weekly Hong Kong, the manufacturers are blending potatoes, sweet potatoes, and plastic industrial resin to produce the imitation rice.
A report in Very Vietnam states that an official from the Chinese Restaurant Association has announced that eating three bowls of this fake rice is the equivalent of eating an entire plastic bag. Consuming such plastic material is obviously a serious health hazard, and officials are allegedly gearing up to conduct an investigation into the factories accused of producing the phony rice.
The scandal is not a surprise when considering China's long legacy food problems, including the 2008 melamine-tainted milk incident where roughly 300,000 people were injured and at least six infants died as a result of being poisoned by the toxic chemical (http://www.naturalnews.com/024837_f...). Other tainted food from China has included melamine-tainted pet foods, lead-tainted children's cups, and even another fake rice case where a Chinese company added synthetic flavorings to ordinary rice to trick people into thinking it was the more expensive "Wuchang" variety.
Some media commentators have already begun to run wild with the fake rice story, comparing the imitation rice to what they say is the imitation reality in which the world lives.
"Fake stimulus, fake money printing, fake GDP growth, fake goods and services being produced, is ... forcing us to consume fake food because we can't afford real food, because we have no real growth, we have no real economy, we have no real industry, we only have fake stuff," bemoaned talk show co-host Stacy Herbert from Russia Today. "So it makes sense that we're only eating fake food."
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