Uncooked rice may be contaminated during harvesting by the spores of a bacterium Bacillus cereus. Recalling something? Yes, the same genus Bacillus that you studied in your BT cotton (Bacillus thuringiensis). These bacteria can survive cooking and mild heating (re-heating the cooked rice). But this doesn’t mean storing or reheating rice isn’t safe. If the rice is not consumed immediately, it should be cooled rapidly (and stored below 4°C), and proper reheating should be done (not just normal steaming of the rice to serve it “hot”). Generally, the symptoms from such poisoning are transient and mild. The toxin can be diarrheal (can be inactivated by heating for 5 min around 50-60°C) or emetic(vomiting) toxin, which leads to more severe poisoning and needs to be heated above 100°C) for more than 90 min.
It’s a hectic thing, right? Still, storing them after cooking?