Dear Valued Customers:

Recently, several publications have surfaced that suggest there may be some concern regarding the safety of NutraCea's rice bran products. NutraCea understands that these articles may cause some anxiety among our customers and we want to ensure that you are fully informed. NutraCea's rice bran is safe, nutritious and meets all regulatory requirements for both food and feed. There is no credible scientific evidence linking consumption of rice products with cancer or any other health risk.

NutraCea believes the conclusions reached by the authors of these publications are completely unwarranted based on the data presented and do not accurately reflect the true situation regarding arsenic in foods. It should be understood that arsenic is present in all agricultural products. Furthermore, rice products have been consumed as a staple food by much of the world's population for thousands of years and have a well-established history of being safe and nutritious.

Claiming that rice products may have detrimental health effects, the authors use the standard for arsenic in water as the basis for their assertions. However, the use of a water standard for judging the safety of a food product is improper and makes no sense. The appropriate benchmark is the tolerable amount of arsenic that may be ingested in the diet.

In recognition of the fact that arsenic is part of the human diet, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and World Health Organization Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives established a Provisional Tolerable Weekly Intake (PTWI) for dietary arsenic. The PTWI is defined as the amount of a contaminant that can be ingested from both food and water on a continual basis over a lifetime with no appreciable health risk. The PTWI for inorganic arsenic was established in 1988 and was set at 0.015 mg per kg of body weight per week. This value represents a meaningful measure of arsenic ingestion for humans and is the more appropriate standard to measure allowable arsenic ingestion. As an example, this PTWI indicates that an 80 kg (176 lb.) person could ingest 1.20 mg of arsenic every week for life with no appreciable health risk. Using the author's own data for bran solubles at the recommended weekly usage rate, ones arsenic intake would be less than ten percent of the PTWI and thus, of little concern.

While NutraCea cannot address what led the authors to their poorly conceived conclusions, we can assure our customers of the safety and wholesomeness of our products. While we support efforts by the agricultural community to reduce contaminant levels in all foods, we also understand that agricultural products the world over contain detectable levels of these contaminants. The simple fact that they are present is not a justification for restricting access to such foods or for making unsupported claims related to health concerns. To do so is to ignore the overwhelmingly positive nutritional benefits that for millennia have and continue to sustain the world's population.