Luigi wondered what Vavilov would make of last week’s news that Japan would require traders and restaurants to specify country of origin for rice. Who knows? The law was proposed because unscrupulous rice traders apparently bought rice treated with pesticides that was imported for non-food use. The canny traders then washed the rice — none too well, apparently — and sold it as food. There are no reports of people becoming sick, but somehow the infringement came to the notice of the authorities. The story lacks detail enough to make a considered judgement. Was the rice seed rice? If so, it was surely more expensive than food rice, so why were traders buying it for ultimate use as food. It isn’t as if the Japanese are eating seed grain as poor people in Africa are doing with emergency aid. I am as mystified as Vavilov might be.
