Nigeria raises alarm on circulation of harmful rice

ABUJA, Dec. 18 (Xinhua) -- Nigeria's National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) on Monday raised an alarm over the circulation of harmful rice products in the local market and how they could be harmful to human bodies.

The food and drugs control agency said it has renewed its plan to stop the circulation of such harmful rice in the country.

Speaking in the city of Awka, capital of Nigeria's southeastern state of Anambra, Christiana Esenwa, a coordinator of NAFDAC, said the government was insisting on a full branding of rice to save consumers from harm.

Esenwa noted that particularly during Yuletide, there was a lot of illegally packaged rice in the west African nation.

She said while the government was encouraging an increase in local rice production, there was the need to protect millions of consumers from the harmful effects of unauthorized rice which contained biological and chemical substances that could cause serious damage to the human system if not subjected to standard treatment.

"There are so many hazards in eating rice that has not been tested because it harbors heavy metals due to nature of its production, these are arsenic and aflatoxins which are harmful to the human body," the official said. Enditem