Indian Rice and Drug Shortages

    Just a couple articles. The first is from the Daily Mail reporting that "India's rice export ban triggers panic buying at US supermarkets - sparking costs of 20-pound bag to soar from $16 to almost $50." The article reports that India "which accounts for 40 percent of world rice exports, ordered a halt to its largest rice export category, non-basmati rice, on Thursday to calm domestic prices, sparking fears of global shortages," adding: "Videos and reports shared on social media over the weekend show Indian-Americans standing in long lines or panic-buying rice in Texas, Michigan, New Jersey Alabama, Ohio, Illinois and California." 

    Given that the United States grows many varieties of rice and is the fifth largest exporter of rice, we probably won't see shortages of rice generally. The Indian-Americans are seeing shortages only because they probably are insisting on rice grown in India. I saw something similar when I lived in Japan where the Japanese, to the extent they could afford to, insisted on Japanese grown rice over U.S. grown rice even for the same varieties claiming they could taste and smell a difference (I never could). 

    But even if we don't see outright shortages (outside of panic buying), we will see price increases. The article relates:

    Rice prices in the US have shot up by around 11 percent on average, according to PBS Frontline.

    One store in Mason, Ohio, is rationing the grain to one 20-pound bag per head, costing $24, PBS reported.

    Non-basmati rice is the is the most common rice used in traditional American recipes, as well as in Asian and Mexican cuisine.

    The move demonstrates the sensitivity of the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to food inflation ahead of a general election nearly next year. 

    The Indian government said the ban would be effective from July 20, and only vessels currently loading would be allowed to export.

    Parboiled rice, which represented 7.4 million tons of exports in 2022, is not included in the ban, the government specified.

And note that this is on top of Russia rescinding an agreement allowing Ukraine to export its wheat through the Black Sea which will disrupt food shipments to Africa and other third-world countries. We are probably going to see social unrest and starvation return to poorer countries. But that is what environmentalists have been wanting.

    The next one may be more serious for the majority of my readers: "Many Vital Drugs Are Now Impossible to Find. Here's Why"--Science Alert. The issue here is not whether drugs are available at a high cost, but whether they are available at all. "The American Society of Health System Pharmacists now lists over 300 active shortages," the article notes, "primarily of decades-old generic drugs no longer protected by patents." The article also indicates that "[c]urrent shortages include widely known drugs such as the antibiotic amoxicillin; the heart medicine digoxin; the anesthetic lidocaine; and the medicine albuterol, which is critical for treating asthma and other diseases affecting the lungs and airways."

    The problem is that these drugs are produced overseas by a limited number of companies. Basically, as the article explains, when a drug company loses their patent on a drug and generics become available, manufacturing tends to shift to overseas in order to cut costs. The consequence is that approximately half of generic drug manufacturing is now in India and China, with the attendant reduction in quality control, which has caused the FDA to fine or even outright prohibit the importation of drugs from certain companies or manufacturing facilities (several examples from India are given). In addition, both the manufacturing of the drugs and the provision of raw materials often concentrates in just a small handful of companies. Hence, "while there may be multiple companies selling the same generic drug in the U.S., there may be only a single manufacturer supplying the basic ingredients. Thus, any hiccup in production or shutdown due to quality issues can affect the entire market."