PRESS RELEASE ON PET FOOD CONTAMINATION: Potential indication of malicious Chinese tampering?
Your friendly neighborhood GlobalSecurity.Org Senior Fellow has four cats. One of them, Pez, lives outside during the day. As is typical of cats, Pez wanders daily to the neighbor's yard. The neighbor has two cats, Pez's associates. We both leave out food for our pets and they freely partake from each other's bowls.
This illustrates another source of worry and risk in the expanding Menu Foods recall of tainted pet food. Although you may be watching your pet's food or preparing it yourself from table scraps, if the pet wanders the neighborhood, it can be eating something out of your control. One answer is to keep your pet inside, a pain if the cat is determined to show its displeasure at the turn of events.
It is, of course, a very minor inconvenience compared to having a dieing pet.
Pet owners have had their confidence utterly dashed by the North American pet food industry. Although no American companies have been responsible for adding melamine to their products, the lack of diligence in controlling their supply chain and glaringly obvious poor business decisions have led to the food supply being compromised by Chinese partners.
As written on Friday, if melamine had been discovered in human consumables, the news would be a firebomb of frontpage outrage.
In any case, a press release on the melamine contamination in the rice gluten concentrates of an American distributor, Wilbur-Ellis, raises more questions.
"Wilbur-Ellis Company is voluntarily recalling all lots of the rice protein concentrate the San Francisco company’s Feed Division has shipped to pet-food manufacturers because of a risk that rice protein concentrate may have been contaminated by melamine, an industrial chemical used to make plastics and fertilizers that can lead to illness or fatalities in animals if consumed," states a press release on the website of the FDA.
"Wilbur-Ellis noted that it obtained rice protein from a single source in China and shipped to a total of five U.S. pet-food manufacturers located in Utah, N.Y., Kansas and two in Missouri.
"Last Sunday, April 15, Wilbur-Ellis notified the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that a single bag in a recent shipment of rice protein concentrate from its Chinese supplier, Binzhou Futian Biology Technology Co. Ltd., had tested positive for melamine. Unlike the other white-colored bags in that shipment, the bag in question was pink and had the word “melamine” stenciled upon it. Wilbur-Ellis separated that bag and quarantined the entire shipment for further testing and since that time, no further deliveries of rice protein concentrate have been made. Samples from the white bags tested negative for melamine. However, subsequent and potentially more sensitive tests by the FDA came back positive for melamine, leading Wilbur-Ellis to voluntarily issue the recall.
"Wilbur-Ellis began importing rice protein concentrate from Binzhou Futian Biology Technology in July 2006. A total of 14 containers holding 336 metric tons of rice protein concentrate were sent from Futian to Wilbur-Ellis. Wilbur-Ellis has distributed 155 metric tons to date."
These figures indicate a truly astonishing quantity of possibly lethally contaminated animal feed.
One line of reasoning being pursued is that the Chinese have stepped on a worthless product with melamine. This would be because melamine apparently assays as protein in general protein determinations of gross mixtures, a characteristic that would dress up a shoddy formulation.
One could read the Chinese vendor's weird shipment as an indication that it was internally assaying its product and had determined it had pooched the melamine formulation too high in a lot of pink bags. Then it reformulated the product with less melamine to pass a domestic assay and put it into white bags. A goof in the warehouse resulted in one incriminating bag being shipped with the others.
Another easy explanation is that the company had determined accidental melamine contamination in its lots and separated the bad bags. Through a goof, one of the bags of bad stuff wound up with others, still containing bad stuff.
In any case, this is still very bad business. It raises two questions: Why is the American market still importing protein extenders from China? And why do the Chinese continue to send it?
Are they nuts as well as greedy?
There is only one responsible course of action when looking at such large amounts of contaminated food: In addition to its recalls, the American pet food industry must immediately cease and desist taking imports from Chinese partners. It must permanently ban them from the US marketplace and take the strongest possible action against any industrial partners violating the ban. Last, it must immediately and transparently come to its customers with forthright explanations of how this is being done.
Related: Wilbur-Ellis press release at the FDA.
Menu Foods pet food recall as incidental agroterrorism.
Related: Chinese feed company advertises unusual compound, known to cause renal failure in cats.
Your friendly neighborhood GlobalSecurity.Org Senior Fellow has four cats. One of them, Pez, lives outside during the day. As is typical of cats, Pez wanders daily to the neighbor's yard. The neighbor has two cats, Pez's associates. We both leave out food for our pets and they freely partake from each other's bowls.
This illustrates another source of worry and risk in the expanding Menu Foods recall of tainted pet food. Although you may be watching your pet's food or preparing it yourself from table scraps, if the pet wanders the neighborhood, it can be eating something out of your control. One answer is to keep your pet inside, a pain if the cat is determined to show its displeasure at the turn of events.
It is, of course, a very minor inconvenience compared to having a dieing pet.
Pet owners have had their confidence utterly dashed by the North American pet food industry. Although no American companies have been responsible for adding melamine to their products, the lack of diligence in controlling their supply chain and glaringly obvious poor business decisions have led to the food supply being compromised by Chinese partners.
As written on Friday, if melamine had been discovered in human consumables, the news would be a firebomb of frontpage outrage.
In any case, a press release on the melamine contamination in the rice gluten concentrates of an American distributor, Wilbur-Ellis, raises more questions.
"Wilbur-Ellis Company is voluntarily recalling all lots of the rice protein concentrate the San Francisco company’s Feed Division has shipped to pet-food manufacturers because of a risk that rice protein concentrate may have been contaminated by melamine, an industrial chemical used to make plastics and fertilizers that can lead to illness or fatalities in animals if consumed," states a press release on the website of the FDA.
"Wilbur-Ellis noted that it obtained rice protein from a single source in China and shipped to a total of five U.S. pet-food manufacturers located in Utah, N.Y., Kansas and two in Missouri.
"Last Sunday, April 15, Wilbur-Ellis notified the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that a single bag in a recent shipment of rice protein concentrate from its Chinese supplier, Binzhou Futian Biology Technology Co. Ltd., had tested positive for melamine. Unlike the other white-colored bags in that shipment, the bag in question was pink and had the word “melamine” stenciled upon it. Wilbur-Ellis separated that bag and quarantined the entire shipment for further testing and since that time, no further deliveries of rice protein concentrate have been made. Samples from the white bags tested negative for melamine. However, subsequent and potentially more sensitive tests by the FDA came back positive for melamine, leading Wilbur-Ellis to voluntarily issue the recall.
"Wilbur-Ellis began importing rice protein concentrate from Binzhou Futian Biology Technology in July 2006. A total of 14 containers holding 336 metric tons of rice protein concentrate were sent from Futian to Wilbur-Ellis. Wilbur-Ellis has distributed 155 metric tons to date."
These figures indicate a truly astonishing quantity of possibly lethally contaminated animal feed.
One line of reasoning being pursued is that the Chinese have stepped on a worthless product with melamine. This would be because melamine apparently assays as protein in general protein determinations of gross mixtures, a characteristic that would dress up a shoddy formulation.
One could read the Chinese vendor's weird shipment as an indication that it was internally assaying its product and had determined it had pooched the melamine formulation too high in a lot of pink bags. Then it reformulated the product with less melamine to pass a domestic assay and put it into white bags. A goof in the warehouse resulted in one incriminating bag being shipped with the others.
Another easy explanation is that the company had determined accidental melamine contamination in its lots and separated the bad bags. Through a goof, one of the bags of bad stuff wound up with others, still containing bad stuff.
In any case, this is still very bad business. It raises two questions: Why is the American market still importing protein extenders from China? And why do the Chinese continue to send it?
Are they nuts as well as greedy?
There is only one responsible course of action when looking at such large amounts of contaminated food: In addition to its recalls, the American pet food industry must immediately cease and desist taking imports from Chinese partners. It must permanently ban them from the US marketplace and take the strongest possible action against any industrial partners violating the ban. Last, it must immediately and transparently come to its customers with forthright explanations of how this is being done.
Related: Wilbur-Ellis press release at the FDA.
Menu Foods pet food recall as incidental agroterrorism.
Related: Chinese feed company advertises unusual compound, known to cause renal failure in cats.
posted by George Smith at 9:43 AM
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