[World standard 0.05%] Egypt's agriculture ministry reinstates zero tolerance policy for wheat ergot

Egypt’s agriculture ministry reinstates zero tolerance policy for wheat
ergot
Ahram Online , Sunday 28 Aug 2016
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/3/12/241837/Business/Economy/Egypts-agriculture-ministry-reinstates-zero-tolera.aspx

Egypt has decided to halt wheat imports if shipments contains any percentage
of the ergot fungus, the agriculture ministry said on Sunday.

Agriculture Minister Essam Fayed issued a decision on Sunday that reverses
an earlier decision to accept a 0.05 percent of the fungus, the
internationally respected limit, in its grain imports, the ministry said in
an emailed statement.

Upon the new decision, Egypt, the world’s biggest wheat importer, will have
a zero-tolerance policy for the presence of the fungus in its imported
wheat.

In February, there was confusio between the state’s grain buyer GASC and the
agricultural authorities over levels of the fungus, which caused weariness
among suppliers and drove some of them to boycott tenders.

Wheat imports for the 2015/16 marketing year are estimated at 11 million
tonnes, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) showed
in October 2015, “about the same as the previous year and the average for
the last five years.”

In June, the supply ministry said that the government had purchased up to
five million tons of local wheat and paid farmers EGP 14 billion (roughly
$1.6 billion) for the harvest season, which started in mid-April.

Earlier this month, the Egyptian office of the prosecutor-general stated
that its ongoing investigation into alleged corruption surrounding local
wheat procurement revealed that some EGP 533 million ($60 million) had been
stolen by officials within the agriculture ministry in collusion with silo
owners.

The prosecution said that officials took government money earmarked to buy
222,000 tons of wheat from local farmers and pocketed the cash while
claiming that the purchases were made.