There have been some interesting, new developments in the Menu Foods pet food recall story.  Some regulators at the FDA are speculating that the adulteration of wheat gluten that’s suspected to have caused the deaths of who knows how many pet may have been deliberate:
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.
There’s more background on Xuzhou Anying at IHT:
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.
[…]
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.
ChemNutra also says it was led to believe that Xuzhou Anying operated its own manufacturing facilities.
In recent months, Xuzhou Anying appears to have posted several requests on online trading sites seeking to purchase large quantities of melamine.
In one March 29 posting on a trading site operated by Sohu.net, a Chinese Web site, people who said they were with Xuzhou Anying wrote, “Our company buys large quantities of melamine scrap all year around.” There were also postings on several other online trading sites, like ChemAbc.net.
Though some American scientists have questioned whether melamine is toxic enough to kill pets, the chemical is not approved for use in food for humans or pets in the United States.
Despite Xuzhou Anying statements, workers in the area say the company does manufacture gluten. A truck driver who was resting Tuesday across the street from the company’s main office said that Xuzhou Anying had manufacturing facilities and that he trucked 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 before offering any more information.
On Tuesday, a journalist visited one of the facilities the truck driver identified in the village of Wangdian, south of Xuzhou. The gate to the building was padlocked, but storage sacks that appeared to hold grain or agricultural supplies were stacked up outside the site, which is in a vast wheat and garlic growing region here in Jiangsu Province.
An animal feed company official working next door to the warehouse said he knew that Xuzhou Anying specialized in exporting agricultural goods and was known for its high-quality wheat gluten.
“They used to have their headquarters right over there,” said Chen Wei, a technology director at Nanjing Shibide Biologic Technology. “They’re pretty well known for their products.”
Later in the article:
As to why melamine would be found in wheat gluten, most experts in the region said they had never heard of mixing the two.
“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.”
On Tuesday, the Chinese government reported that an elderly man died and 202 people were sickened at a hospital in Heilongjiang Province after they consumed a breakfast cereal that turned out to be laced with rat poison.
It’s my understanding that the “breakfast cereal” being referred to here is seitan i.e. wheat gluten.
The U. S. Senate opens an investigation into the recall and the FDA’s handling of the situation today.
It continues to be suggested that the pet foods recalled were contaminated with excessive amounts of vitamin D3. I’ll produce a link when I’ve thoroughly sourced this claim.
The American Veterinary Medicine Association has produced a comprehensive list of the pet foods recalled to date in this very troubling matter.
I find the suggestions in the sources cited above that ChemNutra, the company that supplied the tainted wheat gluten to Menu Foods, never actually visited their Chinese supplier to determine the extent, nature, and character of its operations deeply troubling. Is this due diligence, particularly in this instance of an international transaction in which there is little recourse in the case of a faulty product?
