The great taste of melamine, and the China connection
The pet food problem spreads to chickens. Reuters:
20 million chickens currently on U.S. farms in several states may have been fed contaminated feed…The birds were among millions believed to have been given pet food containing melamine, a chemical used in plastics and fertilizer. It is uncertain how many chickens have been processed and made their way to U.S. retail stores. “We’ll continue to run that down,” said Williams. He added that so far tests by FDA have not indicated a presence of melamine in the chicken feed, most likely because the tests “only get so sensitive.” But the government still considers the feed to be contaminated. An estimated 9 billion U.S. chickens are slaughtered each year.
Melamine has been found in wheat gluten and rice protein imported from China for use in some pet foods, leading to a recall of more than 100 brands. The pet food was later mixed into feed given to poultry and hogs. Earlier in the week, USDA said as many as 3.1 million chickens at 38 farms in Indiana may have been given contaminated feed in early February and many were slaughtered for human food just a few weeks later. Additionally, some 6,000 hogs in six states — California, Kansas, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina and Utah — may have eaten tainted feed.
You could be enjoying the great taste of melamine today — and not even know it.
UPDATE
The issue of the safety of Chinese exports has been somewhat overlooked in this matter. WSJ:
A stamped invoice for wheat gluten adds to evidence linking two Chinese companies to a widening scandal over contaminated pet food. The invoice was apparently sent by Chinese trading company, Suzhou Textiles, Silk, Light Industrial Products, Arts & Crafts Import Export Co., and names the manufacturer of the product as Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Co. The wheat gluten was purchased by Las Vegas-based pet food supplier ChemNutra, which has posted a copy of the invoice, along with two other documents, on a Web site run by a public relations firm working for ChemNutra.
In late March, the Food and Drug Administration said it had traced the source of the contaminated pet food to Xuzhou Anying, a Chinese company in Jiangsu province. The FDA later pointed to a second Chinese company, called Binzhou Futian Biology Technology Co., as another source of tainted ingredients.
The contamination has led to a massive recall of pet food and reports to the FDA of the deaths of more than 4,000 cats and dogs. It’s still unclear how exactly the contaminant, a chemical called melamine that is normally used in plastics, killed the pets.
The Sept. 29, 2006, invoice issued by Suzhou Textiles billed ChemNutra $18,920 for a shipment of 22 metric tons of wheat gluten. The invoice is printed on Suzhou’s company letterhead. The signature of Chen Zhenhao, Suzhou Textile’s general manager, was stamped on the manifest. A man who answered the phone on Friday at Suzhou’s office declined to comment, and didn’t know how to reach Mr. Chen. Previously, both Suzhou Textile and Xuzhou Anying have denied involvement in the tainted pet food scandal…
The FDA says that the Chinese government has indicated that Xuzhou Anying didn’t properly declare its shipment as a food product, instead labeling it as a nonfood item, “meaning that it was not subject to mandatory inspection by the Chinese government,” according to a release by the FDA. Whether such mislabeling may be more widespread is one of the questions the FDA is trying to figure out.
We’ve seen a number of defective products from China reach the US in recent months. It is important to quickly determine how widespread this problem is.