For the second time this year, Egypt has reversed an attempted move to a zero-tolerance policy over ergot levels in wheat imports after its wheat importing body, GASC, was forced to cancel three consecutive wheat tenders after it didn’t receive a single offer to supply wheat by grain traders.

The Egyptian government announced last week it was returning to the internationally accepted threshold for ergot contamination of 0.5% in wheat imports. Ergot is a hallucinogenic fungus when consumed in large quantities but is deemed harmless in small amounts.

The attempted switch to a zero-tolerance policy on ergot has been damaging for the global grain trade. Egypt runs a vast grain buying programme every year and the country is the world’s largest buyer of wheat, importing more than 11m tonnes annually.

However, the uncertainty caused by the changes in ergot policy have effectively removed Egypt from the international wheat market this year and depressed already weak prices even further. In February, Egyptian authorities rejected a 63,000t wheat cargo on ergot contamination grounds.

The wheat shipment was left tied up outside an Egyptian port for weeks, causing Bunge, the grain trader that supplied the shipment, to issue legal proceedings against Egypt for the costs of the undelivered cargo.

The shifting policy in Egypt has left international grain traders uneasy, with some traders blacklisting the north African country for fear of having costly cargoes rejected at port.