Melamine in pet food, wheat gluten from China: FDA

[johnnymk]

First of all, why is any American company buying wheat from China, and secondly, is any of this wheat in human food?

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNe...0?feedType=RSS


Fri Mar 30, 2007 1:39PM EDT
By Aarthi Sivaraman

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. officials said on Friday that melamine, a chemical used in fertilizers in Asia and forbidden in pet food, has been detected in the wheat gluten used by Canada-based Menu Foods.

"The association between the melamine in the kidneys and urine of cats that died and the melamine in the food they consumed is undeniable," said Stephen Sundlof, director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Center for Veterinary Medicine, during a press conference.

Melamine should not be in pet food at all, but its presence has not been confirmed as the cause of sickness or deaths in pets, because there is little research on its effects on those animals, the FDA said.

"So it is very difficult to determine a level that would be harmful or lethal," Sundlof said.

FDA officials said the wheat gluten was imported from China but was not yet known to be used in human food. All wheat gluten coming from there will now be reviewed, they said.

On March 16, Menu Foods recalled 60 million cans and pouches of "cuts-and-gravy" style wet pet food after it was blamed for the deaths of at least 14 animals -- mostly cats.

The company makes pet foods that are sold under a variety of labels such as Iams, Eukanuba, President's Choice and Nutro Max Gourmet Classics, store brands sold at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Safeway Inc. and at specialty pet stores including Petsmart Inc.

DRY FOOD WORRIES

Many companies pulled the pet food brands in question off shelves following complaints from pet owners. Over 8,000 pet owners have called the FDA to report that their pets had fallen sick or died.

Some have even started blaming dry pet food for sickness in their pets, according to various media reports.

One company that makes dry pet food may have received a shipment of the contaminated wheat gluten but doesn't seem to have used it to make any finished products, the FDA said. Until dry pet foods test unsafe, owners can feed it to their pets, officials said.

Procter & Gamble Co. said on Friday that its dry Iams and Eukanuba foods are safe since they do not contain melamine or wheat gluten and are not manufactured by Menu Foods.

Production of all wet foods at the affected Menu Foods plant in Emporia, Kansas was suspended on March 14, P&G said.

Separately, New York state officials, who said they discovered aminopterin -- a substance used in rat poison -- in tainted pet food last week, said they have no doubt that melamine is present in the recalled food.

"Since neither aminopterin nor melamine are compounds that should be found in pet food, it is important for full public disclosure," said New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets Commissioner Patrick Hooker.

The FDA, however, has still not confirmed the presence of aminopterin in the recalled pet food.

Aminopterin is forbidden for use in the United States since it is known to cause kidney failure in cats and dogs. It is also known to cause cancer and birth defects in humans.

Menu Foods scheduled a press conference for later on Friday to respond to the latest developments.

[Butch]

First of all, why is any American company buying wheat from China, and secondly, is any of this wheat in human food?

?? . . . Menu Foods is a Canadian company.

[johnnymk]

"Production of all wet foods at the affected Menu Foods plant in Emporia, Kansas."

So I guess they are buying the wheat from China and having it sent to Kansas.

Why aren't they buying the wheat from America?

[zippyjuan]

Probably because the Chinese can produce the gluten from wheat more cheaply than it can be made in the US or Canada even after shipping costs are included. It has been more of an asian product than a US one. Aparently it is a meat substitute like tofu. Tofurkey is made from it. They can keep their costs down on most items with their low labor costs and fewer safety and environmental controls.

[Butch]

Exactly . . . cost.

Quite simply, US agricultural commodities cannot compete on a cost basis with international products. The only way the US can compete is with protectionist policies that have negative effects on consumers.

Speaking of which, the US just imposed sanctions on Chinese paper products.

[gwilks98]

I was appalled to go into the grocery store and find pet food from the recalled brands on sale. The story keeps changing on the contaminents and the recalls are widening. That's irresponsible on the grocery store's part to encourage sales in that isle when no one really knows WTF is going on...

[redcolours]

melamine? the stuff used to make countertops and furniture?

[zippyjuan]

I was appalled to go into the grocery store and find pet food from the recalled brands on sale. The story keeps changing on the contaminents and the recalls are widening. That's irresponsible on the grocery store's part to encourage sales in that isle when no one really knows WTF is going on...

Items on the recall list should have been pulled. But they would not be pulling anything not on the list. I believe the recall is still only the canned foods with gravy. The same brands without gravy or dried forms are not subject to recall. If you do not feel comfortable buying one that is not on the list, that is of course up to you. Maybe switch to feeding your pet real meats.

[seqiro]

The recall has expanded into some dry foods now from Hills and some treats and food from Del Monte.

http://www.hillspet.com/menu_foods/m...2007_en_US.htm
http://www.delmonte.com/petfoodrecall.html

[thresher]

@gwilks98
ME TOO! I went into my Randall's to buy water and they had the recalls on sale (buy one get one) and when I inquired they said "oh, the recall is over on dry food". wtf? I thought once recalled it was, well, recalled!? It turns out it was only pulled from the shelves and stored. My dog/cat get WholeFoods hi-dollar food that is strictly organic. They eat better than we do.

[TofuNinja]

Just to clear things up right now, from what I know for work. THe recall is MOSTLY on wet foods, POUCH and CANS. You can find the links from a thread on this forum. Also Science Diet is recalling a Perscription food, Feline M/D as it was the only one of their Dry foods that has this wheat gluten in it. Again if a vet hasn't put your cat on M/D then NO WORRIES. Dry food for the most part is 99% safe currently. If you really wanted to play it safe with your dry food Royal Cannin (sp?) has not been affected at all by this recall. There are other brands as well. But just check the ingredients and if it has Wheat Gluten don't buy it , move on and get a different brand.

To recap, the recall was ALWAYS me focused on the wet foods. Only one dry food that I know of has been affected. Play it safe and read the ingredient list and avoid wheat gluten. Also if your pet showins signs of renal failure are you want to have your pet checked, take them to their vet. If you bought your food at PetSmart you can also file a pet incident report with them and I believe that are helping customers get money from vendors. Not sure how effective they will be though. Banfield, the pet hospitals inside PetSmarts) are offering 25% recall screening and some related services, although depending on the vet the prices can be high.

Hope that helps. Remember not everyone is as up to date as they should be so do some of the homework yourself. If your pets are part of your family you owe them that much. I much rather depend on what I can learn than what a stock boy at a super market doesn't know.

[johnnymk]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/bu...gewanted=print

Some Suspect Chemical Mix in Pet Food

XUZHOU, China, April 10 — Behind an unmarked gate in this booming city well north of Shanghai lies a large building at the heart of an investigation over tainted pet food that has killed at least 16 cats and dogs in the United States, sickened 12,000 and prompted a nationwide recall.

This is the property of the Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Company, a small agricultural products business that investigators have identified as the source of contaminated wheat gluten that was shipped to a major pet food supplier in the United States.

Some American regulators suspect there was deliberate mixing of substances. They are looking into the possibility that melamine, the chemical linked to the pets’ deaths, was mixed into the wheat gluten in China as a way to bolster the protein content, according to a person who was briefed on the investigation.

Though American and Chinese regulators are searching for answers, local residents and workers are unwittingly providing clues about how the pet food supply may have become contaminated.

The case is also exposing some of the enormous challenges confronting the global marketplace as China becomes a worldwide supplier of agricultural products.

There are strong indications that Xuzhou Anying, a company with a main office that seems to consist of just two rooms and an adjoining warehouse here, possessed substantial supplies of melamine and even sought to buy quantities of it over the Internet.

If melamine was intentionally blended into the wheat gluten, the findings could become a vast setback for agricultural trade between the United States and China, a country known for lax food-safety regulations.

Stephen Sundlof, director of the Center for Veterinary Medicine at the Food and Drug Administration, said at a news conference last week that the agency had found unusually high concentrations of melamine in some batches of wheat gluten, as much as 6.6 percent.

Xuzhou Anying, though, has tried to distance itself from the pet food recall in the United States, saying it does not manufacture or export wheat gluten and acts only as a middleman trading in agricultural goods and chemicals.

In a telephone interview last week, the company’s manager, Mao Lijun, said he had no idea how wheat gluten with his company’s label ended up in the United States or how melamine, a chemical commonly used to make plastics, fertilizer and fire retardant, was mixed into a product that was eventually shipped there.

Mixing melamine and wheat gluten is an unlikely practice here, according to local industry participants. Nonetheless, the company’s wheat gluten, tainted with melamine, ended up in millions of packages sent to the United States and Canada, leading to one of the biggest pet food recalls ever.

ChemNutra, the Las Vegas-based company that acknowledges it imported the wheat gluten from Xuzhou for sale to pet food producers in North America, says Xuzhou Anying provided chemical analyses that showed no impurities or contamination in the packages of wheat gluten.

Though some American scientists still question whether melamine is toxic enough to kill pets, the chemical is not approved for use in human or pet food in the United States. The F.D.A. says it may have led to kidney failure in some animals.

The question that regulators, agriculture experts, and food producers and distributors may now be asking is whether other substances added to food imports can broadly contaminate the American food supply. The F.D.A. has said none of the contaminated wheat gluten leaked into human food.

Here in Xuzhou, a metropolitan region of about 1.6 million, Mr. Mao turned away visitors to his office, declaring that he had nothing more to say on the matter.

But there are indications that Xu- zhou Anying has manufacturing facilities in this area and also had access to melamine, which is sometimes used as a fertilizer in Asia. For instance, in recent months Xuzhou Anying has posted several requests on Web trading sites seeking to purchase large quantities of melamine.

In a March 29 posting on a site operated by Sohu.net, a big Chinese company, officials of Xuzhou Anying wrote, “Our company buys large quantities of melamine scrap all year around.” There were also postings on several other trading sites like ChemAbc.net.

A truck driver parked across the street from the company’s main office here said that Xuzhou Anying did operate manufacturing facilities and that he carried goods for the company.

“Yes, they have a factory that makes wheat gluten,” said the man, who did not give his name and then telephoned the manager of Xuzhou Anying to check whether he could take visitors to the factory.

On Tuesday, a reporter visited one of the facilities the truck driver identified in the village of Wangdian, about 10 miles south of company headquarters, but the gate to the building was padlocked.

Storage sacks that appeared to hold grain or agricultural supplies were stacked outside the site in a vast wheat- and garlic-growing region here in Jiangsu Province.

“They used to have their headquarters right over there,” said Chen Wei, a technology director at Nanjing Shibide Biologic Technology, an animal-feed company next door. “They’re pretty well known for their products.”

Chinese regulators say they are now carrying out a nationwide inspection of wheat gluten supplies. American regulators have banned all wheat gluten from China, but there has been no domestic recall so far of gluten produced by Xuzhou Anying; the company’s wheat gluten can be used to make bread, baked goods and other food.

Li Jundang, manager of Shandong Binzhou Tianjian Biotechnology, a wheat gluten producer in the city of Binzhou, about 200 miles north of here, said, “We never heard the news of tainted pet food.” Another gluten exporter, Shandong Rongchang, also said it was unaware of any problems with Chinese wheat gluten.

Nor, it seems, have journalists in Xuzhou, who work under state censorship. “I didn’t know this news about Xuzhou Anying,” said Li Ning, news director at The City Morning Post, a daily newspaper here. “And even if we had heard about the news, we wouldn’t be able to report on it because it’s negative news.”

Most experts on wheat gluten in the region said they had never heard of mixing it and melamine.

“If you add chemicals into the wheat gluten, it is no longer called wheat gluten protein,” says Jiang Shaotong, a professor of food engineering at Hefei University of Technology in nearby Anhui Province. “I can’t think of any reason why melamine is needed in the production process.”

Chinese customs officials do inspect or sample products planned for export, but those inspections are not thought to be stringent enough to detect the presence of every chemical or impurity.

Asked about the investigation, a Chinese official working for the inspection and quarantine bureau declined to comment.

But lax food-safety regulation and standards are a problem; food producers sometimes dye meats to make them look fresher and even sell fake milk powder for babies.

This week, the Chinese government reported that an elderly woman died and 202 people were sickened at a hospital north of here after they consumed a breakfast cereal that turned out to be laced with rat poison.