When will the Chinese and their despicable American partners kill the first human?
Clues to pet food recall traced to Chinese city
By David Barboza Published: April 11, 2007
XUZHOU, China: U.S. investigators looking into the tainted pet food that killed at least 16 cats and dogs, sickened thousands of pets and led to a recall in North America have traced the problem to this bustling eastern city.
Xuzhou is the home of Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development, a small agricultural products trader that U.S. regulators say was the source of the wheat gluten, distributed to major pet food suppliers in North America, that was at some point adulterated with a toxic chemical that sickened or killed the animals.
Although U.S. and Chinese regulators are still investigating the matter, this city is already yielding clues about how the gluten may have been contaminated, and also exposing some of the challenges faced by China's emergence as a global agricultural products supplier.
If proof is found that melamine was intentionally blended into the wheat gluten, it could be a huge setback for the agricultural trade between the United States and China, which is already battling a reputation for lax food safety standards.
Of particular concern are indications that Xuzhou Anying, whose main office consists of two rooms and an adjoining warehouse here, may have purchased melamine, the chemical linked to the animal deaths. The company has distanced itself from the pet food contamination and recall, saying it neither manufactures nor exports wheat gluten, but only acts as a middleman trading agricultural goods and chemicals.
In an 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 used to make plastics, fertilizer and fire retardant, got mixed into the product.
But somehow, U.S. investigators say, wheat gluten sold by the company ended up in millions of packages of pet food across North America. That gluten was adulterated, leading to one of the biggest pet food recalls in history.
Now, regulators with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration are examining the possibility that melamine was intentionally mixed into the wheat gluten in China as a way to bolster the apparent protein content and to meet pet food requirements, according to a person briefed on the investigation.
Stephen Sundlof, director of the Center for Veterinary Medicine at the agency, 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. The agency said the concentrations were high enough to have led to kidney failure in some pets.
ChemNutra, a Las Vegas company, said it had purchased the wheat gluten from Xuzhou Anying and then shipped it to pet food makers in the United States and Canada. ChemNutra said Xuzhou Anying had provided chemical analysis indicating that there were no impurities or contamination in the product.
.
.
.
iht.com |
