Avoid suppling substandard WHEAT
We must know the reason for supplying substandard wheat to India. How can people consume inferior quality of sheat? Who was responsible for quality? When and where the consignment was taken into shipment? These are the basic question oOf mustg ask.
IIt has been rorded the that 19 invasive weeds are considered to be dangerous and require
quarantine. Another two that India still has not verified for their ability to cause harm have also been found to be associated with US wheat. It has also recorded leakages in the processing of wheat that allows the weeds to escape in the consignments.
The report, which TOI got access to from government records, makes it clear why the US administration is putting up such a shrill campaign for lowering the conditions that currently disqualify US wheat from
import.
The finding marks a setback to US efforts to find a market for its farmers that grow wheat on 60 million hectares and
export almost half of the produce. With India showing interest in importing 3-5 million tonnes of wheat this year, US looks upon it as a loss of a big business opportunity. Last year too, the US was unable to export its wheat to India because of the tight safety regulations. This year, however, the US was expecting the tide to change in its favour with a concerted level of lobbying. But so far India has denied any possibility of lowering the safety measures in order to allow import from US.
The report noted that Indian regulations demand that there be less than 100 quarantine
weed seeds in a 200-kg sample whereas US is demanding that India allow 12,000 quarantined weed seeds per 200 kg of wheat. The visiting team also found on inspection at the Columbia Grain Export Facility, US, that "a lot of weed seeds, including those of quarantine, still remain in the final processed product..."
Usually, India has a zero tolerance policy against any weed that is on the quarantine list but the government modified the rules last year in order to import wheat and allowed 100 weed seeds per 200 kg as an exception, keeping national food security in mind.
But food-security issues are raked up by the history of contaminated imports as well that earlier hit Indian economy and agriculture quite hard. Phalaris minor or canary grass, which is known to cause 15-50% yield losses in Indian wheat, was introduced in 1961 from Mexico through contaminated foodgrain. Back-of-the-envelope estimates suggest that in Punjab and Haryana alone, the economic losses because of the weed run into Rs 3,700 crore annually.
Hope US will not supply substandard wheat to India in future
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