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from the it's-enough-to-make-you-sick dept.
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) by blackhawk on Sunday December 25 2016, @12:37AM
It's worth remembering that China acts as the world's garbage bin for dumping and recycling of plastic. Some smart person realised that a lot of the ships returning to China were empty, so they started to charge for taking away the excess tons of plastic from the US / etc and "recycling" it.
They don't need to make high grade pellets for production purposes - they could be simply melting down tons of transparent plastic bags and mixing the result with a little starch to make it sticky. Given they are being paid for the recycling costs, it could still be profitable to do this and sell the result as food to some country with enough corruption to not care what you do to it's people.