The Directorate General of Food (DGoF) in a report submitted to the High Court on Sunday stood by its earlier claim that wheat imported from Brazil was fit for human consumption, a high official said.
The DG food submitted the report in compliance with the previous order issued by the HC in response to a petition filed by a lawyer alleging that 200,000 tonnes of wheat imported from Brazil at a cost of about Tk 4.0 billion was not fit for human consumption.
The court would pass an order on the issue on July 08 next.
Deputy Attorney General Tapash Kumar Biswas argued for the state while Mahbub Uddin Khokon stood for the petitioner.
On June 29, Pavel Mian, a lawyer of the Dhaka Judges Court, filed the petition using contents of newspaper reports on Brazilian wheat.
He had sought an order from the High Court to initiate an inquiry into the import. The petitioner also requested the court to issue a rule upon the government to explain as to why the import and supply of such wheat should not be declared illegal.
The petition had also sought a probe into the matter. The High Court bench of Justices Quazi Reza-Ul Hoque and Abu Taher Md Saifur Rahman ordered the government to clarify whether the wheat was suitable for human consumption or not.
The DGoF has been claiming that the wheat in question is consumable, but findings of other organisations say it is rotten and sub-standard.
Earlier the High Court on June 30, following a writ petition, asked the Director General (DG) of the DGoF to submit its report within 72 hours about whether the wheat imported from Brazil was fit for human consumption or not.
"We have submitted our report (152 pages) to the High Court. The honourable court No 6 of the High Court comprising Justice Quazi Reza-Ul Hoque and Justice Abu Taher Md Saifur Rahman has fixed July 8, 2015 for passing an order," Law Adviser (Joint Secretary) of the DGoF Shah Md Abduraihan Alberuni told the FE Sunday.
In the report the DGoF said that some of imported wheat was found to have been broken/ cracked that happened naturally at the time of processing of the grain.
Bangladesh Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (BCSIR) in its test suggested that imported wheat was of inferior quality/substandard.
"All the supplied samples contained higher amount of shrunken and broken kernels than the required specification," said the state-run agency in its test report submitted to the ministry of food.
The test results were made public a couple of days after the food ministry said the wheat was found "within the quality parameters or within specification of contract".
The ministry last week conducted the test in its labs after collecting samples of the wheat from district warehouses following media reports on the import of 0.20 million (two lakh) tonnes of "substandard" wheat.
Two contractors -- Netherlands-based Glencore Grain and Singapore-based Olam International -- supplied the grains to the food directorate earlier this year.
Glencore had supplied 0.15 million tonnes and Olam 50,000 tonnes.
The import cost was around US$ 46 million or Tk 3.55 billion, and 90 per cent of the payment had been made, according to the food ministry.
The wheat was used in the government's various safety net schemes, such as the Food for Work and the Open Market Sale, and as ration given out to law enforcement agencies.
The ministry of food also sent samples to the Institute of Nutrition and Food Science (INFS) of the University of Dhaka for testing the protein content. The protein content was found within the specification at both the BCSIR and the Institute of Food Science and Technology (IFST). The IFST detected the presence of shrunken and damaged kernels between 9.93 per cent and 21.11 per cent.
As per government rules, a supply faces rejection if the level of shrunken and damaged kernels is above 8 per cent.
The damage percentage is also higher in all samples except the ones collected from Kurigram, Gaibandha and Sirajganj, said the BCSIR test report.
Neither the food directorate nor the BCSIR, however, has conducted any toxicity test to see whether the wheat is fit for human consumption although the food ministry claims that it did not find any grain "unfit for human consumption".
"We tested eight parameters in line with the requirement of the food ministry. We didn't conduct tests to find whether the wheat is fit for human consumption," an official of IFST said.
talhabinhabib@yahoo.com
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