Could your rice be made out of PLASTIC? Shocking footage of 'an underground food factory' sparks fears of fake grains

A video of workers feeding plastic into a machine to produce white, rice-like granules has sparked fears on Chinese social media.Many people said the factory, thought to be located in China, was producing toxic rice out of sheets of plastic. Other people, however, said the plastic grains were for industrial use.

The two-minute-long footage was widely shared on WeChat, a Chinese social media messaging app, in early November.

In a version of the video, shared by QQ.com, a topless worker can be seen putting dozens of plastic bags into a machine at a dim-lit workshop. 

The bags were soon shredded by the spinning saws of the machine before being turned into a long plastic tube.

The worker used a pair of scissors to cut the long strip before putting it into another machine placed next to the first machine.

The plastic strip was processed by the second machine, which turned it into long, thin strings.

The strings were delivered into cold water in a large sink for for cooling down before being passed onto a third machine.

A second worker, also topless, can be see standing by the strings. 

The third machine ground the strings into fine granules and they were scooped into a large fabric bag, often used to carry rice in China, by a worker. 

The video ends when the first worker returned to feed the first machine with plastic sheets. It remains unclear where the video was shot or whether or not it was real. However, the clip has sparked a fear among Chinese people after it became widely shared on social media.   

People expressed their concerns over food safety on various social media platforms, including  Weibo. 

One person wrote on Weibo: 'Maybe we shall start planting our own rice.' Another commented in a worrying tone: 'I watched this video this morning and I didn't dare eat rice.'

However, some users said the factory was merely producing plastic granules aimed for industrial use. They argued that it wouldn't be economical to produce fake rice out of plastic.

As one commentator said: 'The plastic materials are much more expensive than rice.' This is not the first time China has been linked to toxic rice. In 2011, plastic rice was reported in the Chinese city of Nanjing after an elderly woman saw dozen of white grains floating on the water as she washed the rice, Xinhua reports.

In May 2015, a plastic rice scare broke out in Indonesia and the suspect grains were reportedly imported from China.

However, the Indonesian official also doubted if the counterfeit business was profitable as the cost of producing plastic rice was greater than natural rice.  

Source: Mail Online