PhilRice wants ‘half-cup rice’ in dining places

MANILA, Philippines — To reduce rice wastage, the agriculture department’s Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) is pushing for a bill that will require food establishments to offer half cup of rice, a measure that President Marcos filed when he was still a senator.

PhilRice development communication division head Hazel Antonio noted that there are 46 local ordinances requiring food businesses to include half cup of rice in their menu, but a law is needed to make the policy effective nationwide.

“We had a proposed Senate bill before by
 President BBM (Bongbong Marcos) when he was still a senator on half cup of rice. It was not passed... But we’ll try to revive that and to have another Senate bill,” Antonio said at a press briefing yesterday in Malacañang.

Antonio said PhilRice has asked the office of Sen. Loren Legarda to sponsor the measure on half cup of rice, which was previously known as the proposed “Anti-Rice Wastage Act of 2013.”

Under the bill filed by Marcos, business establishments that refused to serve less than one cup of rice will be slapped with a fine of P20,000 for the first offense, P50,000 for the second offense and P100,000 for the third and succeeding offenses.

PhilRice deputy executive director for development Karen Eloisa Barroga said two tablespoons of rice are wasted by every person in the Philippines daily or equivalent to P7.2 billion, enough to feed 2.5 million Filipinos.

“Many people get more than what they can eat. Get only what you need and what we have done in the past was to encourage a half cup serving as default. And some of the provinces, actually and cities, restaurants in the cities and provinces partnered with us to make sure that we could have a default serving of half cup of rice to avoid wastage,” she said.

While businesses have the right to offer unlimited rice to their customers, there is a need to create awareness among businesses that there is much rice wastage happening, Barroga said.

Antonio said the ordinances on half cup of rice do not include sanctions for buffet customers who failed to consume all the food they took. PhilRice is encouraging consumers to avoid rice wastage and to buy locally produced rice as the country observes National Rice Awareness Month.

The observance, which carries the theme “Be RICEponsible,” is pursuant to Presidential Proclamation 524 signed on Jan. 5, 2004. The proclamation sought to increase public awareness on measures to achieve rice self-sufficiency and address malnutrition and poverty.
Aside from addressing rice wastage, the campaign seeks to help local farmers and provide consumers with healthy food choices.

“I think our farmers appreciate the hard work. But this time, we’re encouraging every consumer to buy their products because that is one of the goals of DA (Department of Agriculture), specifically the PhilRice under the rice program, to help our farmers to market their products as milled rice, instead of selling them as fresh palay at the farmgate,” Antonio said, noting that income of farmers is low because they only get about 49 percent of consumer prices.

“If we buy rice at P50 (per kilo), they only get less than P25 minus the inputs so they are left with almost nothing. So we encourage them to sell milled rice,” she said. “So now, we’re partnering with institutional buyers to buy from them directly.”