Chinese officials have issued a statement saying that no further melamine contamination has been found in Chinese vegetable protein sources:
SHANGHAI, China (AP) — China says checks on food exporters have turned up no sign of a chemical blamed for the deaths of cats and dogs in North America, and urged U.S. authorities to refrain from further action against Chinese producers.
The government body responsible for overseeing food safety said it accompanied U.S. Food and Drug Administration inspectors on visits to two companies blamed for the chemical contamination.
The incidents involving Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Co. Ltd. and Binzhou Futian Biology Technology Co. Ltd. were “special individual cases,” the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said in a statement viewed on its Web site Wednesday.
[…]
The statement said FDA inspectors also expressed satisfaction with the quality controls and tracing measures in place at another exporter of vegetable protein, Sinoglory, saying those met U.S. production standards for similar products.
“China emphasizes that its determination to crackdown on law breaking enterprises is firm and its policies are effective,” said the statement.
“We hope the American side will accurately and objectively deal with problems among individual companies and not take stringent measures against other Chinese companies producing the same type of products,” it said.
Or, ,“Move along, nothing to see here”. I continue to think it would be prudent to consider Chinese protein sources critically, keep our guards up, and monitor such products on an ongoing basis. Whether mandatory government inspections is the best way to do this is another question. My preference would be mandatory country-of-origin labelling for ingredients and voluntary inspections of the sort that have been noted in previous posts in this series.
The FDA has posted an update on its assessment of the risk to humans from eating melamine or related comments. The transcript of yesterday’s joint FDA-USDA press conference is here. As I’ve said before, I think the FDA is getting ahead of the science on this but perhaps I don’t see the whole story.
There’s an article in the Wall Street Journal noting that the FDA doesn’t have the resources to inspect the food supply. Check out the very interesting graph in the article. As I read it over the last five years the agency’s budget has risen 10% as the number of agency employees has decreased 10%.
The first nationwide class action lawsuit in the pet food recall has been filed in the U. S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. A copy of the complaint is here. Fifteen defendants are named in the complaint including Mars Co., Del Monte, Nestle, Target, Wal-Mart, and others. My lawyer father must be turning over in his grave. An attorney of the old school, he insisted on total perfection in any legal document. The name of one of the defendants, Procter & Gamble, is systematically misspelled throughout the complaint. At the very least it makes a poor impression.
Update
From one of the lawyers involved in the action cited above (in comments):
The class action that you reference is a consumer class action relating to false advertising where manufacturers and retailers promise one thing and deliver another. The frequency of the deadly recalls over the last few years underscores the need for the lawsuit.
She additionally distinguishes between this false advertising suit and the many suits being filed around the country claiming damages as a result of melamine contamination.
If the dogs are becoming ill from eating melamine, what makes pigs and other animals immune from the reported reactions such as kidney failure?
And #2, the May 16 update regarding China’s statement (sign-off), says nothing about the company that folded before inspection. It would appear U.S. departments are just going along with Chinese dictates. If a suspected company folds before inspection, I guess inspectors could say, “No melamine was found”
Is that the content and quality of reports the public will be subjected to?
The nationwide class action is actually a consumer class actionhaving nothing to do with melamine or the pet food recall. There are about 50 lawsuits about that.
My apologies to your father. I am old school as well, but a few scrivener’s errors passed me by this time. They will be corrected shortly. I do hope your father was not strictly form over substtance though.
No, Catherine, he was in interested in both form and substance. Back in the day when somebody would ask “Who’s the best lawyer in town?” (St. Louis), my dad’s name would frequently come up.
He believed in the law, all of the law, harnessing it to solve people’s problems, and that being a lawyer was a solemn responsibility.
Well, Dave your father and I had at least that much in common. The information is still wrong though. There are around 50 lawsuits relating to melamine pending now all over the country.
The class action that you reference is a consumer class action relating to false advertising where manufacturers and retailers promise one thing and deliver another. The frequency of the deadly recalls over the last few years underscores the need for the lawsuit.
The complaint and supporting documents are at http://www.mflegal.com.petfoodlawsuit.
If you look at the press release I cited above, you’ll see that my description largely quotes the release—I haven’t re-reported it.
In the interests of correctness and completeness I’ll include your comment in an update to the body of the post.