Amid all the recent clamor over "tainted" foreign rice, Philip Brasor's Media Mix article of Sept. 21, "Koizumi branded the bad boy in latest food scandal," provides interesting food for thought. Apparently the rice in question was found to have 0.003 parts per million (ppm) of methamidophos residue, yet the agriculture ministry allows domestic green tea to be sold with residue levels of a similar organic phosphate insecticide, acephate, at 50 ppm. Can this be true?
By comparison, the EU's online database of pesticide maximum residue levels indicates it allows the sale of rice with 0.01 mg/kg (0.01 ppm) of methamidophos. Does this explain the Japanese farm minister's casual attitude to the scandal?
Is this rice truly unacceptable for human consumption, or have the standards for foreign products been made much more stringent solely to give an unfair market edge to domestic producers? If the latter is the case, as Brasor's article seems to suggest, why does the Japanese media give so little prominence to this fact? It's a shame that the same level of public outcry and media interest did not develop when it was learned that mercury-tainted whale meat was being sold in Wakayama and given to children in their school lunches.
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