Iran president weighs in on contaminated corn cargo from Brazil
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has weighed in on a dossier related to a 120,000-ton cargo of contaminated corns from Brazil that had been stranded for three years at customs yards south of Iran, saying the grains should be annihilated if they cannot be returned to the point of embarkation.
The Fars news agency said in a report on Saturday that Rouhani had issued the decree after the cargo failed over 2,000 tests by Iran’s standardization organization (ISIRI).
The ISIRI has announced that the corns are contaminated with aflatoxin, a highly dangerous poison produced by certain molds which can cause cancer. It has yet to be decided how and when the grains were infected and whether the contamination had originated in Brazil or the ship was to blame.
Rouhani’s decree came as a total of 17 Iranian companies who had imported the corn cargo from Brazil have been pressing for its release from Iran’s Imam Khomeini Port.
However, the ISIRI has made it clear that the contamination is well above normal, some five to seven times higher that the accepted risk levels. It says the corns should be disposed of as they cannot even be used for making ethanol.
The case comes less than a month after Iran warned Brazil that grains imports would be halted if the South American country wants to obey American sanctions against Iran and stop refueling Iranian ships at its ports.
Brazil’s Supreme Court issued a verdict last month to dismiss an initial ruling which hand banned supplying fuel to Iranian ships.
Iran is major buyer of grains and meat from Brazil with government data putting the total value of annual imports from the country at over $2 billion.
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