Semen Coicis Powder- WTF?

So I was doing some google sluething, trying to see if my favorite veggie bacon is still available in canada. A few hyperlinks later, I ended up at Whole Vegetarian Goods, an asian vegeterian health foods purveyor.

First off, I was suspicious of this website because this company imports food from Asia. Asian countries are not know for their rigorous or reliable food safety regulations. China, after all, was the country caught making soy sauce out of human hair (God, I hope there weren't any short and curly's in there).

This company carries vegetarian foods in chicken, beef, duck, mutton, pork and seafood flavor. I am almost positive that these foods are not vegetarian, and definitely not vegan. I just don't trust the Chinese ;)

The more worrisome of items was the coicis powder, touted as a healthy powder. Curious about what this product was and the potential benefits, I googled "coicis powder". Suddenly, links for "Semen Coicis Powder" came up.


Um...what? When did semen enter into the picture?

After clicking on some of the links, I ended up here.

The product description reads "Coix seed flour is the powdered product which using the good quality Job's tears' seeds through a process with high temperature and high pressure, and then with further processing."

Ever seen Lost In Translation? Yea. That's what's happening here.

The 'making process' reads:

"We use the advanced equipments to ripen the selected Job's tears' seeds through high temperature and high pressure ( the nutrient loss of the material can be reduced to a considerable extent through ripening process ) and then make them into powder. Then the powder will be exsiccated and sterilized at microwave production line. Finally, the products would be packed in the GMP clean-room."

I still  have no idea what the hell is going on here. I know Job's Tear's are a type of Asian grain, so that makes me hopeful that this is a vegetable based product. But that pesky word 'semen' keeps bothering me. Do plants have semen? Does this product contain plant semen?

Or is this another soy-sauce-made-out-of-human-hair fiasco waiting to happen? Ie. Coicis powder made out of frustrated Chinese businessman semen.

I don't read Chinese, so I am going to have to ask my Chinese friends to solve this mystery for me.

Either way, I don't believe I will be purchasing any 'vegetarian products' from Whole Vegetarian Foods anytime soon. The risk of semen consumption is about as high as spending a night clubbing with Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and Katy Perry.