President Rouhani Orders Annihilation of Poisoned Cargo from Brazil

President Rouhani 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 FNA 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 than the accepted risk levels. It says the corns should be disposed of as they cannot even be used for making ethanol.

Iran is major buyer of Brazilian corn and meat.

Last Sunday, Majid Movafeq Qadiri, who serves as the Head of Iran’s Feed Industry Association, announced that Iranian ships export petrochemical products to Brazil and return with the South American country’s agricultural products onboard.

He added that the commercial ties between the two sides are immune to the US unilateral sanctions against Tehran.

Movafeq Qadiri confirmed the reports suggesting that Brazil ships a bulk of its annual corn export, around nine million tons, to Iran, saying sanctions imposed by the United States would effectively fail to hamper a massive amount of trade between the two countries.

“Iran buys around 30 percent of Brazil’s corn exports and (the total) Brazilian annual exports to Iran is worth $2 billion,” he added.

The remarks came a day after two Iranian ships stranded for more than a week off Brazil’s coast began to sail toward Iran after the Supreme Court overturned an earlier ruling which banned refueling the ships due to US’ unilateral sanctions on Iran.

The verdict came after Iran threatened that it would reconsider its trade ties with Brazil and after Brazilian companies warned that refusing to give fuel to Iranian ships would cause economic losses for Brazil.

Movafeq Qadiri dismissed concerns that Iran’s grains inventory would suffer losses if Brazil wants to follow the US sanctions and avoid refueling Iranian ships loaded with corns and other products, including soybeans, sugar and meat.

“This issue has not affected the domestic markets as such as the strategic stocks and the size of the corn imported into the country’s ports are unprecedented in the past 60 years,” the official added.

 Iran is reportedly testing a new trade route with Brazil as ships carry urea to the South American country and return home with corn. That comes as Iran seeks to increase its export of petrochemicals to cope with the impacts of US sanctions on direct oil sales.

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