Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) will develop a new standard for rice flour, which categorizes the flour according to its utility, for the purpose of increasing consumption of rice flour products such as rice-flour cakes, rice-flour noodles and rice-flour bread.
The new standard classifies the rice flour into three types according to the components of rice flour, following a general standard of wheat flour such as “low-gluten flour” and “high-gluten flour.” Rice flour packs attached with a new label of three types will debut in the Japanese market.
MAFF aims at stimulating new demands for rice flour by enabling consumers to easily select a proper type of the flour according to their uses.
All of rice flour manufacturers and related companies will be guided to follow the new standard as a uniform standard of the rice flour industry. Sales of categorized rice flour according to its utility start in fiscal 2017.
At the same time, MAFF plans to advise companies of the rice flour industry that they should indicate “non-gluten” on a label of their rice flour product containing extremely low “gluten” proteins that can trigger an allergic reaction.
It is expected that “non-gluten” labeling will be helpful for the industry to create new demand for the rice flour in domestic and foreign markets.