Nigeria has seized over 100 bags of plastic rice smuggled into the country, where prices of the staple food are skyrocketing ahead of the Christmas and New Year holidays.
[...] The rice is suspected of having been smuggled or illegally shipped in from China through Lagos port, a senior customs official in Nigeria's commercial hub told AFP.
The 50-kilo bags branded "Best Tomato Rice," had no date of manufacture and were intercepted Monday in the Ikeja area of the sprawling city, the official said on condition of anonymity.
"We have done a preliminary analysis of the plastic rice. After boiling, it was sticky and only God knows what would have happened if people consumed it," Ikeja area customs controller Mohammed Haruna was quoted as saying.
Nigeria has banned rice imports as it seeks to boost local production.
Source: teleSUR
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @05:01PM
Yeah doesn't make sense to me. Seems more expensive to make fake rice. Look at the per ton prices: http://www.thairiceexporters.or.th/price_eng.html [thairiceexporters.or.th]
There's a cost in making plastic look like rice and most cheap plastic when boiled in water stay hard or if they become soft they don't get sticky. If you make fake plastic rice you would be selling it as plastic rice for higher prices for display purposes or similar, not trying to pass it off as the real thing.
As for making other stuff look like rice (especially stuff that would become sticky after boiling like starch) that seems even more expensive. Just wholesale starch alone is already similar to rice prices, imagine the cost of processing it so it looks like rice. If it was so easy and cheap to turn starch into fake rice, poor people would be eating it as a staple instead of real rice.