The rice product market for young children, which includes biscuit crackers and cereals is booming. If the child is gluten intolerant then rice breads and rice milks can be added to this list. Gluten intolerant adults are also high rice consumers, as are those people of South-East Asian origin.
Rice milk is so high in inorganic arsenic that the UK Food Standards Agency issued the advice that children under the age of four-and-a-half should not drink rice milk. Despite this, you would be hard-pressed to locate this advice on product packing or displays.
Where are the regulations?
While there is tight regulation around inorganic arsenic in our water supplies in Europe but none for food, yet in Europe only 5% of our inorganic arsenic comes from water and 95% from food. Bottled water in the EU is around 50 times lower in inorganic arsenic water concentrations than rice. Therefore, you would need to drink five litres of water to get the equivalent arsenic dose of eating a small 100g (dry weight packet) portion of rice. The failure to regulate rice in food is unsustainable and needs to be rectified.