Rice mix-up

The leadership of a government entity tasked with protecting Jamaicans from substandard products is facing scrutiny over the seemingly bungled release of a shipment of rice that failed to meet certain quality checks in July.

Though it has not disclosed it, the National Compliance and Regulatory Authority (NCRA) has reportedly hammered out a solution with the importer, Blue Zone Limited, that is now allowed to import the same product under an acceptable classification.

Blue Zone’s managing director is Charles Tufton, the son of Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton. The government minister is the sole shareholder of the company. His son is listed among three directors of the company that was incorporated in January 2021, records show.

Dr Tufton, who ceased being a director in July 2021, said he has not been involved in the operations of Blue Zone. “I am neither an officer nor a director,” he said, when asked if he knew of the matter and played a role in its resolution.

Charles, meanwhile, confirmed that the situation with his company’s rice shipment was resolved after the “intervention” of the NCRA boss Dr Lorice Edwards Brown.

“The ingredients or composition of the product was never in question, but rather how it was labelled,” he said.

But concerns stalk the Aubyn Hill-run Ministry of Industry, Investment and Commerce over how the situation unfolded, with some senior figures claiming that the circumstances surrounding the release of the shipment being “a clear example of how one misfit can fail an entire country”.

The NCRA, formerly the regulatory division of the Bureau of Standards Jamaica, is an agency of Hill’s ministry. The ministry did not answer Sunday Gleaner queries on whether the minister was aware of the situation.

The Integrity Commission, Jamaica’s main anti-corruption agency, confirmed receiving an anonymous package regarding the case on September 15.

BREACH OF STANDARDS

The NCRA detained five containers of rice with a total of 2,780 bags of long grain rice branded as Dew Prem, short for premium, that Blue Zone bought from Suriname, according to the detention notice (domestic market) dated July 7, 2022 obtained by The Sunday Gleaner. The size per bag was stated as 45 kilograms (99 pounds).

A note on the form stated that an inspection of samples from the shipment “revealed prima facie breaches” of the Standards Act 1968, and the product should remain in detention pending further investigation with a decision to be communicated within 30 days.

The investigations include testing the label and product itself for conformance with the relevant standard. The current compulsory standard for rice was declared in 2013.

If breaches are confirmed and deemed correctable, the importer will be allowed to indicate how they could do this to ensure compliance with the law. If it’s determined that the issues cannot be fixed, the authorities will condemn the product.

Blue Zone’s rice was imported as a Grade A milled product and the standards for those products include maximum moisture content of 14 per cent and maximum broken kernels of 10 per cent.

The NCRA tested three samples of rice from the Blue Zone shipment.

The results returned a moisture content within acceptable range but all three samples exceeded the maximum allowable amount of broken kernels.

Sample one was 22.34 per cent; sample two 17.54 per cent and sample three was at 17.04 per cent, a copy of the document shows.

The test result document was stamped July 20, 2022 by the Chemistry Branch of the Bureau of Standards Jamaica.

However, on that same date, the NCRA granted the release of the products.

This was despite the adverse results which should have triggered further investigations, including a determination as to whether the problems could have been fixed.

Questioned by The Sunday Gleaner, the NCRA declined to state a number of things; including whether it granted the release of shipment detained on July 7 and specifically who ordered the release.

“The Information Disclosure Policy of the NCRA does not permit the release of client confidential information,” stated a response prepared by the regulatory body and sent to The Sunday Gleaner by the agency’s head Lorice Edwards Brown.

On the question of the basis for the release, it added that the authority “grants release from detention when requirements with standards and laws are complied with”.

But it appears that the NCRA CEO authorised the release of the products on the same date that the adverse test results were returned, according to a copy of the notice of the release form.

The stamped document, which granted “full release”, carries the signature of Edwards Brown, and is dated July 20, 2022.

Edwards Brown has declined to answer specific questions on her involvement in the release of the products from detention in light of the adverse findings and before the NCRA’s standard processes were completed.

‘MOTIVE BEHIND THE DETENTION’

Blue Zone’s managing director Charles Tufton indicated that the goods detained on July 7 were released after he appealed and the matter was “elevated” to Dr Edwards Brown.

He said the company was told that the detention would be lifted once the test results were satisfactory and “assurances” were given that the testing would be “expedited by a certain date to limit the inconvenience caused to the company”.

“After that date passed, the company followed up and subsequently learned that the Head of Compliance was off the island and therefore the release had to come from another authorised officer of the entity,” he explained.

“Blue Zone was also cynical as to the motive behind the detention, since it was aware that the same brand of rice was being distributed in the local market by multiple players at the time,” Charles added in responses to this newspaper.

It remains unclear why the NCRA CEO granted the release given that the test results were unfavourable and the agency’s response that “no shipment under detention is released until the importer satisfies the regulatory requirements”.

Blue Zone was under NCRA scrutiny from March when shipments cleared then were flagged by a risk assessment, which reportedly resulted in the detention of a subsequent shipment on July 7. Another shipment was detained later in July.

A “very concerned” NCRA wrote Blue Zone on August 2, levelling various accusations on the basis of tests showing that the rice imports “did not meet the specifications of the relevant Jamaican Standard” and were “non-compliant”.

The NCRA made reference to the three separate shipments – the one in March and the two in July – and accused the company of “unlawfully” releasing two containers of “substandard” rice that were under detention.

Noting the “serious alleged breaches” by Blue Zone based on the “unauthorised importation, the non-conforming test results and the premature release of the long grain white rice from detention”, the NCRA asked Blue Zone to respond by August 8 specifying how it intended to address the matters.

Charles Tufton responded in a letter in August 5, rejecting the allegations and, instead, accused the NCRA of handling the situation poorly.

Regarding the failure of his rice imports to meet the standards, Charles accepted that his company may not have been thorough in its due diligence.

He said before starting to import rice in October 2021, the company checked with its Suriname supplier whom he said indicated that it had been complying with a maximum kernel breakage level of 20 per cent for Jamaica.

“Admittedly, we may have erred in using this information and not checking what the official standard was; however, many of our previous shipments were released into our possession for distribution and as a result, we saw that as confirmation of our supplier’s standard being an acceptable one,” Charles said.

“At no time was the company attempting to breach the regulations, and now that we are aware, we will work with your agency to ensure we are compliant moving forward,” he said, questioning whether other local distributors “in breach” will have to recalibrate their products as well.

‘NOT AWARE OF THE DETAINMENT’

Charles denied the claim that Blue Zone unlawfully released two containers under detention for distribution to Montego Bay.

According to him, his brokers informed that the early July shipment was cleared and released into the company’s possession after which an NCRA official advised that the shipment should have been detained pending further tests.

“We were not aware of the detainment; in fact, to date we still have not received any official detention order on that shipment. I indicated to you that two containers were already committed to a customer in Montego Bay, and one was sold to another customer in May Pen,” Charles said in his letter.

He further stated that he was asked to delay transporting the containers to Montego Bay to allow for sampling in Kingston, and to ask the purchaser not to distribute the product until the results were returned.

“I complied with these requests, hence my astonishment at being cited in your letter for ‘premature release of containers under detainment’. To further compound the issue, after almost two weeks, the results of the tests were still not communicated to Blue Zone, and the clients were still awaiting authorisation to see a product they had already paid for.”

This, he said, set the stage for the appeal to NCRA head.

“It was only after the intervention of Dr Lorice Brown that a formal detention release was issued to me via email and I was then able to inform my clients that the rice had been released,” Charles said.

He said Blue Zone was “not of the view that we have breached these rules as we believe we made sufficient effort to understand all the requirement” and that the company “has never set out to wilfully or maliciously breach any regulation”.

‘VICTIMISED AND UNFAIRLY TREATED’

Blue Zone said the experience has left it feeling “victimised and unfairly treated by a regulator who selectively enforces its mandate. It is also apparent that the bigger, more established companies in the industry that import the same product are not subject to the same level of oversight and scrutiny”.

The NCRA did not respond to specific questions from The Sunday Gleaner on those issues, including the chain of events, reiterating its disclosure policy on “client confidential information”.

It described as “satisfactory” the level of compliance by rice importers with Jamaican standards.

But the agency admitted that it is concerned that the maximum level of broken kernels “is not met” by importers of Premium Grade A and Grade A rice.

On whether the NCRA has made similar detections with the rice from Suriname, the agency said: “At this time, there is nothing to report regarding rice.”

In 2021, Jamaica imported 90 per cent of its rice from Guyana and Suriname, with Guyana accounting for 51 per cent.

jovan.johnson@gleanerjm.com