Fake rice, fake news

After all the fuss about fake rice supposedly downing six people in Sta. Fe town in Bantayan island comes the sobering followup. The town mayor, Jose Esgana, said that, per their investigation, two kids in the town suffered stomach pains but these were not caused by eating fake rice. While samples of the rice reportedly eaten by the kids would still be tested by the National Food Authority, the mayor said he personally tested it but suffered no adverse effect from the act.

Reports on the proliferation of fake rice supposedly from China have been with us for a while now but has attracted attention again because of people’s easy access to social media. An interesting response to this development was made recently by James Magbanua, national president of the Grains Retailers Confederation of the Philippines (Grecon).

“There is no such thing as fake rice, only fake news,” he told ABS-CBN News. “There is no actual fake rice discovered mula 2015 hanggang ngayon.”

In a way, Magbanua is correct. The fact-checking website snopes.com actually did a study on the claim that plastic rice from China “that is difficult to discern from ‘real rice’” exists. The conclusion? The claim is unproven.

From China, where the claim supposedly originated in 2011, to Singapore, to Vietnam, to South Korea, to Indonesia and more recently to Nigeria, one common thread was noted: most of the reported fake rice claims crumbled when subjected to deeper scrutiny.

Then there’s common sense. As Magbanua said, there’s no incentive for rice producers and retailers to sell fake rice because “it is costlier to produce fake rice by putting plastic additives.” But even that statement sides with the claim that fake rice exists or is being produced, which in itself is unproven. Spread in social media, for example, is a video showing the manufacture of fake rice.

“At roughly the 1:40 mark, an individual’s hand enters the frame to manually sift the ‘grains of rice.’ However, the product looks way too thick to pass as rice anywhere (commenters surmised the substance shown was actually non-food pellet filling),” said snopes.com.

So there.