Probe source of fake rice, Aquino orders

President Benigno Aquino III on Friday ordered law enforcement agencies to start tracking down sources of “synthetic rice” that may have entered the country although state scientists would not say for sure whether or not a suspicious sample from Davao City was indeed made of fake grains.

The President told Interior Secretary Mar Roxas and Justice Secretary Leila de Lima to get their investigation line agencies—the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) of the Philippine National Police and the National Bureau of Investigation, respectively—on the case.

The Food Development Center (FDC), the laboratory arm of the National Food Authority (NFA), held a press briefing yesterday to say that preliminary results of their tests showed the Davao sample was “contaminated with dibutyl phthalate or DBP, a raw material for making flexible plastic products.”

But FDC officer in charge Jocelyn M. Sales stressed that further tests were needed to know whether the sample was actually not rice. The samples, she added, did contain starch—which is also found in rice.

Earlier reports on the suspected synthetic rice, supposedly smuggled from China, included information that the grains were a mixture of potatoes, sweet potatoes and plastic or an industrial synthetic resin.

DBP is a plasticizer used to soften materials like PVC so that it could be processed easily. “It is used in the manufacture of various products, including food-containing items like plastic wraps and lunch boxes,” Sales explained in a press briefing yesterday.

Francis Pangilinan, Presidential Assistant on Food Security and Agricultural Modernization, told Davao residents not to panic. He said the contaminant DBP was not a poison that could kill a person immediately upon ingestion.

“I was informed that, for harmful effects to be felt, one has to be ingesting DBP everyday for at least three months,” Pangilinan said.

“And even if the sample from Davao City was found with DBP, there was no cause for alarm or panic,” he insisted. “The NFA has been conducting daily inspections to ensure that there is no fake rice in the market,” he claimed.

NFA administrator Renan B. Dalisay said the agency had addressed more than 20 complaints from various parts of the country, including General Santos City and Metro Manila, regarding consumers’ suspicions about the milled rice they bought.

“In most of these instances, we were able to easily verify that the questionable product was actually rice,” Dalisay said. “It was only on the complaint from Davao that we needed laboratory tests.”

Roxas, interviewed in Cagayan de Oro City, confirmed that the President discussed the matter with him early yesterday. He said he had already told the CIDG to “help the NFA and the DA (Department of Agriculture) in their investigation.”

In particular, he tasked the CIDG to determine the component of the “plastic rice” and locate the warehouses where such shipments are brought. “The CIDG should determine where these came from. In other words, the police will follow and establish the supply chain or custody chain (of the fake rice),” he said.

“We will also find out where these were sold and where are the warehouses so that we will able to know how they arrived),” Roxas added.

De Lima also said on Friday she was ordered by the President to investigate the presence of synthetic rice in the Philippine market.

“I’ve been directed by the President to look into that. I will constitute a task force to investigate that,” De Lima said in a statement sent via text message yesterday.

She said she would coordinate with Pangilinan and tap the NBI.

The NFA found that the suspicious rice in Davao City came from a trader in Bansalan town, Davao del Sur.

Fake rice is said to look no different from real rice but has the texture of styrofoam when cooked and consumed. With Marlon Ramos and Tarra Quismundo