Sad case of apparently poisoned cassava, where a 4 yo died soon after eating with her family. Odd that the other members of the family were not also poisoned. Poor little girl could have died of something else. No autopsy of course.
It would have been useful to know if the cassava was the cause of death.The family will probably put this down to bad luck, and continue to eat cassava from the same source.

Khmer Times/San Bunsim Monday, 15 August 2016
Girl, 4, Dies from Poisoned Cassava

A four-year-old girl in Pursat province died yesterday after eating poisoned cassava, a police official told Khmer Times yesterday evening.

Yem Yeoun, the deputy police chief of Bakan district, said the girl died at 1am yesterday in Sam San village in Bakan’s Ta Lo commune.

“The girl was Ra Sreyleak whose father was 53-year-old Chea Ra and her mother was 50-year-old Noun Saron. The family has two children including the girl,” he said.

“The family always ate cooked cassava every two or three days and never got poisoned before. Unfortunately, on Saturday night, the girl vomited up the cassava after eating it. Then her family gave her some honey to eat and let her go to bed,” he explained.

They realized the girl died in the early hours and held her funeral yesterday evening, the police chief said.
http://www.khmertimeskh.com/news/28470/ ... d-cassava/

I seem to remember that there is cyanide in there. Not sure

Would this be the same boiled potato-like vegetable that my landlady used to give me all the time. You peel off the skin and eat the 'potato' inside ?

How should Cassava be Processed to Render it Safe for Consumption?

Cassava contains more than one form of cyanogenic glycosides. Different varieties of cassava are generally classified into two main types: sweet cassava and bitter cassava. Sweet cassava roots contain less than 50 mg per kilogram hydrogen cyanide on fresh weight basis, whereas that of the bitter variety may contain up to 400 mg per kilogram.

Sweet cassava roots can generally be made safe to eat by peeling and thorough cooking. However, bitter cassava roots require more extensive processing. One of the traditional ways to prepare bitter cassava roots is by first peeling and grating the roots, and then prolonged soaking of the gratings in water to allow leaching and fermentation to take place, followed by thorough cooking to release the volatile hydrogen cyanide gas. Cutting the roots into small pieces, followed by soaking and boiling in water is particularly effective in reducing the cyanide content in cassava. Whilst fresh cassava requires traditional methods to reduce its toxicity, adequately processed cassava flour and cassava-based products have very low cyanide contents and are considered safe to use.

http://www.cfs.gov.hk/english/multimedi ... 19_01.html

A terrible story of mass poisoning by cassava in the Philippines from 2005. The kids bought cassava snacks from the vendor outside the school and over 100 were poisoned, 27 of them died.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/do ... 423641.htm

Siem Reap girl dies from food poisoning after eating cassava
Fri, 17 February 2017
Khouth Sophak Chakrya

A 3-year-old girl died on the way to Siem Reap Provincial Referral Hospital after eating cassava with her parents on Wednesday night, with local police saying the child succumbed to food poisoning.

Angkor Chum district police chief Man Sokhat yesterday identified the victim as 3-year-old Nan Neta, whose parents work as farmers in Siem Reap province’s Angkor Chum district.

According to Sokhat, Neta’s mother, Chan Sokha, 36, told him that on Wednesday that she and her husband spent the day harvesting cassava.

“Sokha said that when returned home, they brought home some cassava to cook for their dinner,” said Sokhat.

“An hour [after dinner], their daughter had a fever and started vomiting and getting diarrhoea at the same time. Seeing that, they asked their neighbours to bring her to the hospital on their motorbike. She died on the way.”

Sokha said that the child’s autopsy showed that she died of “food poisoning, meaning that she had too much of the cassava”.

When prepared improperly, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, cassava can be poisonous to humans.
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/s ... ng-cassava

This government is prehistoric. The NGOs will save us.













eventually.

it is a big crop now for the chinese biofuel industry.
very drought tolerant and strips the soil of nutrients within a couple of seasons.
i think the purple one is the most toxic if i remember right.