Bangladesh food ministry reiterates no evidence of substandard wheat

The Bangladesh Food Ministry Sunday again issued a statement reiterating that they didn’t find any evidence of rotten or substandard wheat in the consignment imported from Brazil.

On June 24, the ministry has issued a similar statement in the wake of some media claims that the government has imported ‘substandard’ Brazilian wheat.

“Even after clarifying that no evidence of substandard wheat has been found, some media are still publishing negative news on the issue,” said the statement signed by deputy secretary Md Kawsar Ahmed.

Like earlier statement, the ministry Sunday also mentioned that after seeing media report, the ministry has conducted a laboratory test of the Brazilian wheat and found no evidence of rotten and substandard elements in it.

Under the supervision of the director general of food department, the samples of the wheat were collected from across the country with help of district commissioners and tested those at the laboratory of the department.

The statement said the government has been importing wheat from abroad since long by floating international tender for fulfilling wheat demand of the country.

It said the food department imports wheat under an agreement with lowest bidder and as per the agreement the authority only accepts the imported wheat consignment after a laboratory test, run under nine specifications.

No negative information regarding Brazilian wheat was found under those nine specifications when the wheat sent to the science laboratory for testing.

The ministry threw an open challenge to all to prove the claim of substandard wheat. “Any individual or organization can collect sample of the wheat from government godown and test it to any laboratory of the country. We will support them,” the statement said.

The ministry urged all concerned to refrain from ill motive to make the nation confused by publishing wrong and assumption based information. (Source: BSS)