The decision took immediate effect, preventing the consignment from reaching Polish shops. Polish food-quality inspectors in the northern city of Gdańsk barred a 250-tonne shipment of white rice from Myanmar, a Southeast Asian country, from being placed on the Polish market after finding dead pests and pest residues on Wednesday. Poland’s Agricultural and Food Quality Inspection Authority, known by its Polish acronym IJHARS, announced the decision in a social media post on X. IJHARS did not specify the type of pests found in the shipment but said that its decision had been given immediate enforceability. In July, inspectors also barred 40 tonnes of organic jasmine rice imported from Thailand from sale in Poland because of incorrect labeling. Tomasz Białas, director of IJHARS, told Polish media that during the first six months of this year, the agency issued 35 decisions prohibiting the placing on the market of 56 batches of agricultural and food products from third countries. By comparison, the previous year saw 60 such decisions covering 75 batches. Products from Ukraine, China, India, Thailand, Brazil, South Africa and Argentina are among those most frequently inspected.
