I've never seen anything like that and I've kept rice around for years as well. Do you live in a poor country where they don't have proper food protection agencies? If things like that hatched in food people bought from stores that would make the news, I've seen it in the news before so it can't happen that often.
> Do you live in a poor country where they don't have proper food protection agencies?
USA.
So, I mean, kinda.
But, unless they're irradiating or freezing your rice before it gets to the store, there are rice weevil eggs in it. They're inside the rice grains. If you've eaten much rice, you've eaten rice weevil eggs.
Probably comes from grain storage locations in warmer climates then. I can't find anyone talking about these online in my local language which is to the north, we have no native pests like these so they all only live inside houses. There are other weevils, but they are very rare and mostly comes from other sources and starts eating your bread etc, they don't come from packages you get in the store. Nobody said there is a problem storing these things long term, instead you get rid of them by getting rid of all their eggs in your kitchen.
This reminds me of something I read in Discover magazine around 20 years ago.
The gist of it was that immigrants in western Europe from various countries in Africa had developed nutritional deficiencies after immigrating. It appeared their diets were the same, perhaps better on paper, so it wasn't clear why their health was deteriorating.
It turned out that these people had diets rich in unwashed greens and vegetables, and they were likely consuming far more beneficial bacteria, insects, and minerals in their diets. They continued their mostly-vegetarian diets in Europe, but were no longer benefitting from what tended to accompany their foods before.
Not sure why I remember that. Regardless, we should all be eating dirt and weevils.
The eggs don't hatch right away, can take months or years, but most people buy rice to eat right now, not to stockpile, so it's mostly consumed before the weevils hatch. And when they do, it's just a known nuisance, not worth reporting.
I cannot find anyone talking about rice weevils in my language online, so I really doubt finding them is a common thing everywhere. If it is that impossible to get rid of them then it is probably a climate thing, they are common in your climate but not in my climate.
So the advice would be to look at local pests and how to avoid having those in your storage. We still have other kinds of weevils but they are not everywhere like you say rice weevils are, you are unlikely to have them in packages meant for humans so storing things long term is fine.
