Today’s Update on the Pet Food Recall—5/6/2007

There’s an editorial this morning in the Baltimore Sun which opens:

It doesn’t really make sense that the United States, the world’s premier wheat-growing nation, should be importing wheat gluten from China. But after American quotas on wheat gluten were removed in 2000, the price fell by half and imports poured in. U.S. producers can’t compete; the surviving domestic firms are able to supply only about 20 percent of the demand.

Now it turns out that one way two Chinese firms were able to sell their gluten so cheaply was by adulterating it with melamine and perhaps other industrial chemicals. As a result, up to 4,000 dogs and cats in the U.S. have fallen ill or died, and contaminated feed has been given to at least several thousand hogs and chickens. The Food and Drug Administration believes the threat to human health is minimal – but there’s still something wrong with this picture.

The editorial goes on to note the challenges the FDA faces in ensuring the security of the food supply and concludes

America must overhaul and strengthen its food inspection programs – and put them in one agency. Fair competition from foreign producers is generally good for the consumer, but unscrupulous outfits, wherever they may be, don’t deserve a place at the national table.

About time.

There’s a good, succinct summary of the pet food recall scandal to date from the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader. I found this paragraph of note:

Perhaps 500 pigs and 2.7 million broiler chickens made it to market, officials say, but researchers believe melamine doesn’t bioaccumulate, meaning it doesn’t build up in body tissues. And since neither pork nor poultry generally make up the entirety of anyone’s diet, “we have no reason to believe that those animals are of any risk to the public,” said Kenneth Petersen of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Despite fears about tainted foods, officials don’t recommend preparing meals for pets from scratch.

Unfortunately, when the pork, chicken, bread, soup, and prepared food that you eat are all contaminated with melamine from adulterated wheat or rice gluten, the argument about diet diversity isn’t nearly as strong.