Is Chinese wheat flour adulterated with melamine being sold as rice protein concentrate in the United States? That’s certainly what I’d take away from this story in USA Today:
A week after the first recalls, when contaminated wheat gluten was the suspect, Blue Buffalo ran a full-page newspaper ad touting the healthfulness of its products and pointing out — in large type — that they didn’t include wheat gluten. “You love them like family. So feed them like family,” the ad said.
Since then, the 4-year-old Blue Buffalo has recalled or pulled a third of its product line. Its first recall on April 19 was a dry cat food, whose recipe called for rice protein concentrate. At the time of the recall, the food was thought to have been made with contaminated rice protein concentrate from China. The FDA has now identified that as contaminated wheat flour.
and from this USDA/FDA joint press conference
The first is related to a misrepresentation of the wheat gluten and the concentrated rice protein. I want to preface it by saying as you are all aware we have been following wheat gluten and rice protein concentrate from two sources in China, and have undertaken a number of tests with those related to the detection of melamine and melamine-related compounds. As part of our strategy just to ensure that we are following this in all possible directions, a portion of both the wheat gluten and the rice protein concentrate that was already a concern because of melamine has been further analyzed by our forensic chemistry center. And we have discovered that these products, labeled wheat gluten and rice protein concentrate, are we believe mislabeled, and that they actually contain wheat flour that is contaminated with the melamine and melamine-related compounds.
This is potentially extremely serious. There are some people who have extreme allergies to wheat in any form and consume rice products as an alternative. If the products they buy with the understanding that they contain no wheat in reality do contain wheat, there could be deadly consequences.
The USA Today article cited above is a lengthy and thorough recap of the pet food recall scandal to date. Check it out.
The Chicago Tribune reports on yesterday’s testimony by David Acheson, the FDA’s newly-appointed “food safety czar”, before a Congressional committee:
WASHINGTON — The federal government’s new “food czar” conceded during a hearing Wednesday that the government lacks the resources to do comprehensive investigations and must repair its flawed food safety inspection. The recent contamination of pet food that led to the deaths of cats and dogs was seen by some skeptical members of Congress as sounding a broader alarm for food consumed by humans.
David Acheson, the assistant Food and Drug Administration Commissioner for food protection, tried to assure lawmakers that the food supply was safe, yet he acknowledged that the FDA has not collected all the evidence of possible food contamination in recent cases and called for more resources to police the rising amounts of imported food. Currently, the FDA inspects only about 1 percent of the $60 billion in food imported annually to the U.S.
Is there any level of funding and resources that would give the FDA the ability to ensure the safety of our food? That’s the heart of the question asked by the chairman of the House Agriculture Committee:
Acheson offered “every assurance that the … wheat flour used to make contaminated pet food [has] not entered the human supply chain.”
But Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, told Acheson that the discovery that the pet food ingredients had been spiked with melamine occurred only because large numbers of pets fell ill and some died. It was not, he said, because federal inspectors intercepted contaminated imports.
“The explanations from the USDA and FDA leave me with the uncomfortable feeling that maybe we just got lucky this time,” Peterson said. “The next time tainted food or feed products slip through the very large crack in our import inspection system, we may be forced to confront a much more serious situation in terms of animal or human health.”
I found this particularly outrageous:
Some Agriculture Committee members saw the contamination as reason to revisit labeling laws on food. Last year Congress passed a country-of-origin labeling bill and Bush signed it, but the USDA has yet to enact it, arguing that it’s too expensive.
Can you say “nonfeasance”? I thought you could.
Look, it’s not the job of the alphabet soup of federal agencies to make policy. They might want it to be but that’s beyond their charters. When Congress passes a bill and it’s enacted into law under the president’s signature, no federal agency should balk on the grounds that it doesn’t like the law. This isn’t a Democrat-Republican thing. This is a federal bureaucracy thing.
As we’ve now learned the country-of-origin labelling bill doesn’t go far enough. It must extend to the country-of-origin of the ingredients used in producing food products. Who knows? It may need to extend to everything used in the production process.
Make no mistake, this story is not small potatoes: it goes right to the heart of the biggest economic trend of the last 20 years: outsourcing and offshoring.
It looks to me as though the Chinese realize that:
SHANGHAI — China vowed yesterday to crack down on contaminated and sometimes deadly food and drugs after a string of revelations about the safety of Chinese products.
The campaign followed a disclosure that authorities had detained managers from two companies linked to contaminated pet food that killed dogs and cats in the United States and Canada.
State media, meanwhile, said the country’s disgraced former top drug regulator would go on trial this month on charges of taking bribes to approve untested medicine.
China has long suffered adverse publicity tied to its lax enforcement of food and drug safety, but the present round has been especially worrying.
China faces criticism from the United States and European Union for what they contend are unfair trade practices. Tainted food scandals could lead to bans on food products that would put hard-pressed Chinese farmers under even greater strain.
Let’s take a trip down memory lane. Shortly after this story broke the Chinese government denied outright that products imported from China had any role in the deaths of pets here:
China denied Monday that pet food ingredients exported to the United States are to blame for the recall of more than 60 million cans of cat and dog food and the deaths of 14 animals.
There was also a statement (which I can’t put my hands on right now) about the thoroughness of the Chinese inspection regime. I’m inclined to agree with that. Unfortunately, the problem isn’t what’s in place officially, it’s what happens unofficially within the government. No one doubts that offical corruption is so widespread in China it isn’t merely a corruption of the system, it is the system. No U. S. food safety system that relies on good faith by Chinese officials is worth a damn.
