The Council of Agriculture’s Agriculture and Food Agency on Saturday said that it has tracked down the rice grown in fields allegedly contaminated by furnace slag dumped by a Tainan-based waste treatment company and that the rice had not entered the market.
The rice harvested from farmland beside a river in Tainan’s Syuejia Township (學甲) was first sent to a drying plant and later to a milling plant in Chiayi County, where a check of the mill’s warehouses found more than 181,000 tonnes of the suspect rice.
The agency said that all suspect rice has been sealed and it is certain that none of it has made its way into the market.
It said it would conduct random tests on the rice to see if the grain contains heavy metals and the results would be available tomorrow.
Investigators said a waste treatment company allegedly dumped the slag on paddy fields, covered it with soil and then rented the land to farmers. The head of the company, surnamed Kuo, and a major shareholder, surnamed Wei (魏), have been handed over to authorities on suspicion of forging documents and violating the Waste Disposal Act (廢棄物處理法).
Investigators said the company collected about 10,000 tonnes of waste per month from six steel companies.
Based on an average processing fee of between NT$400 and NT$600 (US$12.36 and US$18.54) per tonne, the company could have made between NT$5 million and NT$6 million per month from the dumping furnace slag, or more than NT$200 million over four years.
Investigators tracked down the company after slag was allegedly dumped in Chiayi County’s Yijhu Township (義竹) in October last year.
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