Mat Sabu: Local, imported rice mixed since 1970s abetted by legal grey areas

Summary

• Agriculture and Food Security Minister Mohamad Sabu reveals local and imported rice mixing a decades-old issue, yet no laws directly address prosecuting wrongdoers.

• Mohamad says ministry tasked with crafting legislation to curb practice.

While local and imported rice mixing has been a known practice tracing back to the 1970s, no laws outlining prosecution against offenders exist, said Agriculture and Food Security Minister Mohamad Sabu.

Stressing that the issue should not be characterised as one unique to the administration, the minister said the historical trace was revealed in a Malaysia Competition Commission (MyCC) study on the rice and paddy industry conducted early last year.

“The mixing of rice has been happening since the 1970s, namely after the establishment of the National Rice and Paddy Board under the administration of previous governments (and is) not something happening only now under the current government.

“Based on the Control of Padi and Rice Act 1994 and subsidiary legislations under it, there is no specific and clear provision on the legal prosecution of rice mixing offences,” Mohamad said in a parliamentary written reply yesterday.

He noted that the findings of the MyCC research were presented to the Cabinet Committee on National Food Security Policy and the cabinet on Dec 17 and 20, 2024, respectively.

Subsequently, the ministry was instructed to refine via legislation its methods and mechanisms aimed at controlling the mixing of local white rice and imported white rice.

The ministry was also directed to submit for the cabinet’s consideration comprehensive proposals on setting a price for the mixed rice category.

Local rice shortage

Mohamad was responding to a question from Muslimin Yahaya (PN-Sungai Besar), who had asked the minister to explain the local white rice shortage amid supposedly high production rates.

Highlighting how the nation’s rice fields spanning 644,854ha produce more than 2.4 million metric tons of rice per season, the Sungai Besar MP pressed Mohamad to detail the ministry’s plans to address the ongoing shortage.

Last week, it was reported that the findings of a study conducted by the Biotechnology and Nanotechnology Research Centre of the Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (Mardi) found that approximately 50 percent of the 5,000 imported rice samples that authorities seized were mixed with local white rice.

The study period was from the end of 2023 to March 2024, when the ministry created a Special Task Force for Integrated Operations of Local White Rice to identify the local white rice chain.

On Oct 9, Mohamad said the government would introduce regulations prohibiting the mixture of local white rice with imported white rice, which is one of the main strategies to resolve the issue of local white rice shortage.

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