Thai Scientist Assures Quality And Safety Of Thai Rice

[webfact]

Thai scientist assures quality and safety of Thai rice

BANGKOK: -- A Thai researcher at the Chulabhorn Research Institute assures consumers that arsenic concentration in Thai rice is only very tiny amount and poses no threat to consumers’ health.

The assurance came in the wake of a recent study by the magazine Consumer Reports finding significant amounts of the toxic element in a variety of US rice products. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been urged to set a limit on concentrations of arsenic in rice.

The finding sparks concerns over possible negative fallout on Thai rice exports.

Assoc Prof Jutamaad Satayavivad, a lecturer in the Environmental Toxicology, Chulabhorn Research Institute allays concerns over the negative fallout.

The institute has checked and kept records of arsenic contamination in Thai rice for five years and found that arsenic level is only 0.2 milligrammes per kilogramme of rice, ten times lower than the Thai FDA’s safety standard at 2 mg/kg.

Australian and New Zealand safety standards are one milligramme per kilogramme, the scientist said.

As a result, Thai consumers can be confident that Thai rice is safe and there will be no impact on Thai rice exports. Arsenic concentration is found to be highest in rice grown in the US, followed by those in Thailand's neighbouring countries.

Assoc Prof Juthamas expressed concern, however, that rice from neighbouring countries smuggled into Thailand could be falsely identified as Thai rice and sold in the kingdom as well as being exported to other countries under the name of Thai rice.

“Non-Thai rice [falsely] identified as Thai rice and exported to other countries can tarnish the reputation of Thai rice,” the researcher said. “That is dangerous for Thai rice export markets.”

Arsenic contamination can derive from soil, water, fertiliser and pesticide. Organic rice cultivation produces rice with a low arsenic contamination. However, in Thailand’s biggest fragrant rice growing region in the Northeast, the natural geological contamination of arsenic is low.

Chulabhorn Institute and the Centre of Excellence on Environmental Health and Toxicology are developing a more accurate method of arsenic testing for Thai rice exporters.

However, currently, arsenic test service is available at many laboratories in line with the standard required by importers.

“A plan for the future is controlling arsenic contamination in the country’s rice cultivation areas,” Assoc Prof Jutamaad said.

Arsenic is a metalloid that can be both in organic and inorganic forms. Intake of a large amount of arsenic can cause vomiting, diarrhea, stomachache, muscle spasm and can lead to heart failure.

Continuous intakes of small amount of the toxin can be hazardous to the cardiovascular and nervous systems and can be a carcinogen. (MCOT online news)

-- TNA 2012-10-17

[Rionoir]

I notice they failed to report the level of arsenic Consumer Reports found in their tests.

[sjjmmi]

Now need to start to worry

[hellodolly]

Sounded like a well rounded article.

Are test show very low content.

If they show a high content it is rice smuggled into Thailand.

That about covers all the bases.

[Tywais]

I notice they failed to report the level of arsenic Consumer Reports found in their tests.

Consumer Reports

[cloudhopper]

I think this news article is confusing milligrams and micrograms.

[Tywais]

I think this news article is confusing milligrams and micrograms.

The 1 milligram in 1kg is 1ppm (1 part per million) which corresponds with the above Australia limits - Australia, currently use a 1 ppm limit for arsenic in food. Curiously, the US has no Federal limits of what is acceptable in food, only water.

[bigbamboo]

Well if a Thai scientist says we are all safe there's nothing to worry about then...........

[cloudhopper]

I think this news article is confusing milligrams and micrograms.

The 1 milligram in 1kg is 1ppm (1 part per million) which corresponds with the above Australia limits - Australia, currently use a 1 ppm limit for arsenic in food. Curiously, the US has no Federal limits of what is acceptable in food, only water.

Ah that's what I was looking at - that limit is 10 parts per billion - I wonder how the food limit could be 100X higher?

[Thai at Heart]

Oh my lordy lord. And please don't tell me that it isn't possible to blend exports according to KNOWN and REPORTED levels known within the industry to meet the limit and leave the remainder in the domestic market????

Ergo, it could be very possible that the levels in domestic product could be considerably higher than those exported. Do they think the exporters would be so stupid to send anything out of the country that might lead to them having to pay to bring it back?

[asiawatcher]

It's not the arsenic threatening Thai rice exports, it is the price fixing by the Govt.

[Soi Sauce]

It cannot impact on rice exports coz there aren't any.

[fareastguy]

Usual non forward looking Thais have shot themselves in the foot again.. greedy rice dealers smuggling in dodgy cheap rice to put in the pledging scheme, then identified as Thai rice is finding it's way to into the food chain, trouble is they didn't think that foreign buyers would do health & safety checks.

Thailand obviously doesn't check before it's dispatched or this batch would have been identified as being over the limit, or they did check & falsely labelled the goods as within limits!

Maybe a good idea is for future buyers to do independent checks of goods at the point of dispatch before shipping.

Sounds a lot like the poison veggie issue, all the officials know of the pesticide problem but hey lets not give the farmers an added problem of withdrawing unfit goods from the shelves, lets just keep saying it's fine & hope the consumer doesn't notice .

[Ricardo]

Wonder if he also looked at insect-contamination, which we've found to be an increasing problem, with recent purchases for domestic consumption ?

Anyone else finding extra-unwanted-protein to be a problem ?

[GentlemanJim]

Wonder if he also looked at insect-contamination, which we've found to be an increasing problem, with recent purchases for domestic consumption ?

Anyone else finding extra-unwanted-protein to be a problem ?

Thats all to do with storage. Do you buy the rice loose? If you get insects in the rice, leave the uncooked rice in a metal bowl in direct sunlight before you cook it, the insects get too hot and all crawl out.

[h90]

I notice they failed to report the level of arsenic Consumer Reports found in their tests.

Wonder if he also looked at insect-contamination, which we've found to be an increasing problem, with recent purchases for domestic consumption ?

Anyone else finding extra-unwanted-protein to be a problem ?

Thats all to do with storage. Do you buy the rice loose? If you get insects in the rice, leave the uncooked rice in a metal bowl in direct sunlight before you cook it, the insects get too hot and all crawl out.

hope they take their excrements with them.

[ratcatcher]

Made me think of that old Agatha Christie story "Arsenic and Old Rice"

[MaxLee]

How much did the Pheu Thai bribe that scientist to lie about the rice schemes' a*******?????

[geriatrickid]

The arsenic in rice is primarily a US production issue and associated with key southern growing states. It is hypothesized that because the rice is now grown in fields that were once used for cotton cultivation, that the rice is picking up the inorganic arsenic from the leftover pesticide residue. Apparently, cotton boll weevils were controlled using pesticides that relied on arsenic. Rice sourced from California doesn't demonstrate the same levels of inorganic arsenic as US southern state sourced rice.

Edited October 17, 2012 by Scott
formatting

[Payboy]

Assoc. Prof Juthamas expressed concern, however, that rice from neighbouring countries smuggled into Thailand could be falsely identified as Thai rice and sold in the kingdom as well as being exported to other countries under the name of Thai rice.

“Non-Thai rice [falsely] identified as Thai rice and exported to other countries can tarnish the reputation of Thai rice,” the researcher said. “That is dangerous for Thai rice export markets.”

Nice little low blow there for those rascally neighbors.

[spirit47]

A little bit this, a little bit that, have a nice cocktail at least. I living between ricefields, and I wonder how many times they spray poison. They coming with big bags and mix it directly at the fields. We use normal rice only for feed the dog, I eat organic rice, and my wife buy rice from Amway. Anybody know about the quality of the Amway rice?

I filter all water we use in the house, because nobody can say it is safe. Nobody knows, how something react together and maybe thousend of chemical they never checked. When I hear them talking about safety standarts, I know thats only a number, anybody decide...

But you can see at the statistics, that cancer rising, in 20 years anybody will get cancer in his lifetime.

Our generation will be famous in the future for destroy paradise...

[Ricardo]

Wonder if he also looked at insect-contamination, which we've found to be an increasing problem, with recent purchases for domestic consumption ?

Anyone else finding extra-unwanted-protein to be a problem ?

Thats all to do with storage. Do you buy the rice loose? If you get insects in the rice, leave the uncooked rice in a metal bowl in direct sunlight before you cook it, the insects get too hot and all crawl out.

Thanks for the tip !

We buy 5-kg plastic-bags of rice from Tesco-Lotus or Big-C, but didn't see this problem previously, only over the past year or so, It would be great to know whether stocks are older than previously, or whether they've changed suppliers to someone who has an infestation-problem in their storage-facility, or whatever.

Someone on another thread recently (running a restaurant in Aussie IIRC ?) had reported the problem with larger sacks of Thai rice.

But if a scientist says there's no quality-problem, then we must be imagining it, or just be unlucky.

[sunshine51]

About 8 months back I picked up a 10 kilo sack of jasmine rice from my local rice

vendor. Been buying this one brand for years and personally I'm not all that

concerned about the tiny amount of arsenic that's posibly in it along with other

nasty toxins. What concerned me about this one particular sack of rice was

the fact that I found about a dozen bent and very rusty 2 inch nails in it.

Oh well...I guess it helps the iron enrichment somewhat...just glad we found

em before the nails found our stomachs.

[Thai at Heart]

Wonder if he also looked at insect-contamination, which we've found to be an increasing problem, with recent purchases for domestic consumption ?

Anyone else finding extra-unwanted-protein to be a problem ?

Thats all to do with storage. Do you buy the rice loose? If you get insects in the rice, leave the uncooked rice in a metal bowl in direct sunlight before you cook it, the insects get too hot and all crawl out.

Thanks for the tip !

We buy 5-kg plastic-bags of rice from Tesco-Lotus or Big-C, but didn't see this problem previously, only over the past year or so, It would be great to know whether stocks are older than previously, or whether they've changed suppliers to someone who has an infestation-problem in their storage-facility, or whatever.

Someone on another thread recently (running a restaurant in Aussie IIRC ?) had reported the problem with larger sacks of Thai rice.

But if a scientist says there's no quality-problem, then we must be imagining it, or just be unlucky.

In makro they have a brand marked old crop

[Songhua]

Wonder if he also looked at insect-contamination, which we've found to be an increasing problem, with recent purchases for domestic consumption ?

Anyone else finding extra-unwanted-protein to be a problem ?

Thats all to do with storage. Do you buy the rice loose? If you get insects in the rice, leave the uncooked rice in a metal bowl in direct sunlight before you cook it, the insects get too hot and all crawl out.

Thanks for the tip !

We buy 5-kg plastic-bags of rice from Tesco-Lotus or Big-C, but didn't see this problem previously, only over the past year or so, It would be great to know whether stocks are older than previously, or whether they've changed suppliers to someone who has an infestation-problem in their storage-facility, or whatever.

Someone on another thread recently (running a restaurant in Aussie IIRC ?) had reported the problem with larger sacks of Thai rice.

But if a scientist says there's no quality-problem, then we must be imagining it, or just be unlucky.

'twas I Ricardo. Yes, we have always bought 25kg bags of (no need to divulge brand here) so-called AAAA Thai jasmine. For about the past ten months, almost every bag has had some level of infestation (sometimes extreme). We purchase through a Chinese wholesaler who has assured us it doesn't ever sit very long with them.

BTW, Thai jasmine rice has tripled in price over the past four years in Australia.

[Ricardo]

Wonder if he also looked at insect-contamination, which we've found to be an increasing problem, with recent purchases for domestic consumption ?

Anyone else finding extra-unwanted-protein to be a problem ?

Thats all to do with storage. Do you buy the rice loose? If you get insects in the rice, leave the uncooked rice in a metal bowl in direct sunlight before you cook it, the insects get too hot and all crawl out.

Thanks for the tip !

We buy 5-kg plastic-bags of rice from Tesco-Lotus or Big-C, but didn't see this problem previously, only over the past year or so, It would be great to know whether stocks are older than previously, or whether they've changed suppliers to someone who has an infestation-problem in their storage-facility, or whatever.

Someone on another thread recently (running a restaurant in Aussie IIRC ?) had reported the problem with larger sacks of Thai rice.

But if a scientist says there's no quality-problem, then we must be imagining it, or just be unlucky.

'twas I Ricardo. Yes, we have always bought 25kg bags of (no need to divulge brand here) so-called AAAA Thai jasmine. For about the past ten months, almost every bag has had some level of infestation (sometimes extreme). We purchase through a Chinese wholesaler who has assured us it doesn't ever sit very long with them.

BTW, Thai jasmine rice has tripled in price over the past four years in Australia.

So clearly the bugs add to the perceived-value of the rice, in some way ! More 'authentic' perhaps ?

I recall Mrs-R once telling me, that the BBQ-ed country-rats we saw on-sale in an Ayuttaya-market, were much more healthy than town-rats, which didn't taste so good ! But I still declined to sample one.

[SOTIRIOS]

...how about cadmium....and other toxic metals.....

....come on....how about a real scientific analysis.......

.....no more white lies where lives are at risk...........

Edited October 18, 2012 by SOTIRIOS

[OzMick]

FYI coal-fired power stations are a source of heavy metal contamination, either view dust emitted from the exhaust stack or effluent from the ash storage.

[unanimosity]

Well if a Thai scientist says we are all safe there's nothing to worry about then...........

Would this be the same scientitst that says no problem to the government allowing the use of DDT and other pesticides and herbicides....says Thai electricity is different and doesn't need an earth/ground, etc., etc.?

[MaxLee]

Every scientist working for the government, is a treacherous dog who is getting bribed by government officials,...