The pet food recall has been expanded. Again.
Menu Foods has previously recalled wet cat and dog food produced with adulterated wheat gluten supplied by ChemNutra Inc. Menu Foods is now expanding the recall to include cuts and gravy and select other products which do not include ChemNutra wheat gluten but which were manufactured at any of Menu Foods’ plants during the period that ChemNutra wheat gluten was used at that plant, to the extent they have not already been subject to a recall, due to the possibility of cross-contamination. Menu Foods has received a report from a customer and has received study results, both of which indicate cross-contamination.
The Menu Foods press release is here. The new recall is all of “cuts and gravy”-style foods and includes some varieties that have not been recalled previously e.g. Schnuck’s Select.
The Senate has voted in favor of stricter control of pet food safety:
WASHINGTON — Responding to the massive recall of cat and dog food, the Senate voted Wednesday in favor of stricter production and labeling standards so people would have more information about what they are feeding their pets.
The 94-0 vote was on an amendment by Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) to broader legislation related to the Food and Drug Administration.
The amendment also called on the government to create a pet version of the system that now tracks food contamination and outbreaks of illness and death in people. The lack of such a system for pets became apparent in the recent recall of more than 100 brands of dog and cat food apparently made with contaminated Chinese ingredients.
That’s a start. No country-of-origin labelling requirements yet. I don’t believe that it’s really very likely that we’ll institute a strict enough inspection regime to catch all of the contaminated food that’s coming into this country so labelling both human and pet food with the country of origin of all of their ingredients seems like a minimally prudent requirement to me.
There’s more evidence of deliberate fraud on the part of Chinese exporters in this matter:
SHANGHAI: A Chinese company accused of selling contaminated wheat gluten to pet food suppliers in the United States failed to disclose to China’s export authorities that it was shipping food or feed to the United States, thereby avoiding having its goods inspected, according to U.S. regulators.
Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development, one of two Chinese companies at the center of the massive pet food recall after thousands of animals were killed and sickened, had shipped more than 700 tons of wheat gluten labeled as “nonfood” products earlier this year through a third party, a Chinese textile company.
The “nonfood” designation meant the company’s shipments were not subject to mandatory inspection by the Chinese government.
The details of the case, some of which were disclosed Friday in a circular released by the Food and Drug Administration in the United States, are just the latest clues that Chinese feed suppliers may have been intentionally disguising the contents of their goods.
There’s a week-long national holiday going on in China so don’t expect the newly-arrived U. S. investigators to reach many conclusions soon.
Here’s an interesting report on a USDA/FDA press confererence on the story. The FDA explains why they’re not recalling more chickens despite their having been contaminated with melamine:
Dr. David Acheson, who was named FDA’s assistant commissioner for food protection on Tuesday, and Dr. Kenneth Peterson, USDA’s assistant administrator for field operations for the Food Safety and Inspection Service, said the agencies are legally bound to depopulate any animals found to have consumed adulterated feed, and that the dilution of the contaminants makes it extremely unlikely they would sicken humans.
They explained that a small percentage of rice protein or wheat gluten contain melamine, and those ingredients are a very small component of pet food. Then, a very small portion of that pet food is used in feed for the likes of poultry and hogs, which excrete the matter through urine. Also, meat from chicken and hogs only make up a portion of a human’s diet, limiting exposure.
“Along with the fact that there is no evidence of harm, we made the decision that no recall is being issued,” Peterson said.
I see a number of problems with this decision. Nearly half of the samples of Chinese wheat gluten and a quarter of the samples of Chinese rice gluten that the FDA has tested have been contaminated with melamine. Hundreds of samples. That’s not a few. Eating the flesh of contaminated animals isn’t the only potential source—humans may be consuming the contaminated wheat, rice, and corn gluten in the form of breads, cookies, soups, and prepared foods from any of thousands of different sources. This has probably been going on for years.
I’ve been asked a number of times why North American wheat gluten isn’t being used rather than European or Asian. This story may provide an answer:
WICHITA, Kansas: Amid growing fears over contaminated imported wheat gluten found in recalled pet food, domestic makers say the infrastructure for U.S. gluten production has been so eroded by low cost imports that it can no longer supply domestic demands.
Only four domestic gluten manufacturers — two located in Kansas — have survived the flood of foreign wheat gluten brought here in the last decade at prices cheaper than U.S. producers can make it.
When the United States removed quotas on gluten imports in 2000, gluten prices plummeted by about half, said John Neufeld, chief operating officer for Dallas-based White Energy, whose firm purchased the bankrupt wheat gluten facility in Russell, Kansas.
That gluten plant was built in the mid-1990s by Farmland Industries when the U.S. government had placed quotas on foreign gluten imports to protect its domestic gluten industry, Neufeld said.
Even though the U.S. exports half of the wheat it grows, it imports roughly 80 percent of its wheat gluten from China, Australia and the European Union, according to figures from the National Association of Wheat Growers.
The emerging scandal that the pet food recall has brought to light may help to explain why Chinese wheat gluten is so cheap.
In addition to the lack of country-of-origin labelling (which would be nice to see on ALL foodstuffs), the Senate amendment fails to provide the FDA with the power to invoke mandatory recalls. (The USDA has the power to demand recalls, so why not the FDA?) The suppliers and manufacturers have demonstrated their inability to self-monitor effectively – perhaps the ability of the FDA to enstate recalls would provide an appropriate incentive for the industry to monitor its processes better.
Surely the FDA should be savvy to the ways importers/exporters endeavor to bypass regulations and inspections. Tactics such as the fraudulent importation of grain products in textile shipments aught to be anticipated. Is the FDA proactive in anticipating such tactics? What are the consequences for the companies involved in this type of fraud?
FDA testing protocols clearly need to be reviewed and revised. The paucity of shipments that are inspected by the FDA is stunning – increasing the numbers of inspections and enhancing the efficiency of testing protocols needs attention. How is it that the FDA was not testing for melamine if melamine had been a known agricultural input in some countries like China? I would have thought that a list of “knowns” would include all agricultural inputs (and the breakdown products of herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, rodenticides, etc.) that are known or suspected to be used by the country-of-origin. Relying on the producers and suppliers for that information seems to be a set-up for being duped.
I think it’s even more basic than that, L. According to the reports some of the tests have shown 6% melamine. That’s a lot. Surely, that would have shown up with a simple test for specific weight. No mass spectrometer necessary.
To me that means that neither the FDA nor the manufacturers have any real idea what they’re getting from the suppliers or whether they’re being cheated, which, apparently, they were. That’s why I keep pointing out the corporate governance aspect of this story. Management was clearly asleep at the switch.