Today’s Update on the Pet Food Recall—4/27/2007 (Updated)

Lots of news today. More pet foods have been recalled:

SHERBURNE, N.Y. –Chenango Valley Pet Foods has begun voluntarily recalling pet foods manufactured with a certain shipment of rice protein concentrate, the company said Thursday.

The company, working with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, was informed by Wilbur-Ellis that rice protein concentrate shipped to Chenango Valley Pet Foods may be contaminated with melamine. Melamine, an industrial chemical used to make plastics and fertilizers, may lead to illness or fatalities in animals if consumed.

The pet foods were sold to customers in Wisconsin, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, who in turn sold the products to their customers through catalog mail orders or retail outlets.

The recalled foods include specific production runs of Doctors Foster & Smith Chicken & Brown Rice Formula Adult Lite Dog Food, Doctors Foster & Smith Chicken & Brown Rice Formula Adult Lite Cat Food, Lick Your Chops Lamb Meal, Rice & Egg Cat Food, Bulk Chicken & Brown Rice Formula Adult Lite Dog Food.

Pet food makers have petitioned the government for assistance in dealing with China in investigating how the wheat and rice glutens became adulterated with melamine. I have mixed feeling about this. As a pet owner I want to get to the bottom of this. But as a citizen I don’t think that the government should be shouldering risks for private companies. They gambled on a cheaper overseas source for their ingredients; they lost. Now the taxpayer will be saddled with a bill. Perhaps these companies should be required to put up bonds before obtaining ingredients from overseas suppliers.

Menu Foods, maker of much of the pet food that has been recalled has sued ChemNutra, the company that sold it the contaminated wheat gluten:

TOPEKA | A pet food manufacturer that recalled 60 million cans of its products last month has sued another company, alleging that an ingredient the second firm supplied was contaminated.

Menu Foods Midwest Corp., based in Emporia, is seeking damages “substantially in excess of $75,000” and wants to force ChemNutra Inc., of Las Vegas, to pay costs associated with the recall of dog and cat food.

Wheat gluten sold to Menu Foods by ChemNutra contained melamine, a chemical found in plastics and pesticides and not approved for use in pet food in the U.S. by the Food and Drug Administration, according to the lawsuit.

Menu Foods filed its lawsuit Monday in Lyon County District Court, based in Emporia, about 50 miles south of Topeka.

“ChemNutra represented itself to Menu Foods and the North American food market as a business that imports high-quality nutritional and pharmaceutical ingredients from China to the United States,” the lawsuit said.

Menu Foods has previously projected that the recall would cost them at least $40 million. I don’t think that will scratch the surface when the legal fees are taken into account.

China has acknowledged that wheat and rice gluten exported from China contained melamine:

BEIJING — Chinese authorities acknowledged for the first time Thursday that ingredients exported to make pet food in the USA contained melamine, a chemical the U.S. Food and Drug Administration suspects led to scores of pet deaths in the past month.

As Beijing stepped up efforts to investigate the contamination, including allowing FDA inspectors to visit China, experts here said the fragmented nature of China’s vast food processing industry makes inspection difficult and increases the likelihood of future problems.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing said in a statement issued Thursday that an investigation found melamine in wheat gluten and rice protein exported to the USA by two Chinese companies. Previously China has denied exporting any tainted pet-food ingredients to the USA and Canada. The contaminated shipments avoided US customs inspection because they were not declared as pet food ingredients, the statement said. They were declared as products not requiring inspection.

But the ministry rejected FDA claims that the melamine was to blame for harming pets.

“There is no clear evidence showing that melamine is the direct cause of the poisoning or death of the pets,” the statement said. “China is willing to strengthen cooperation with the U.S. side … to find out the real cause leading to the pet deaths in order to protect the health of the pets of the two countries.”

This is enormous news and IMO is clear indication of two things. First, that exports and, specifically agricultural exports, are tremendously important to the country. Second, that the problem is actually much worse than they’re making it out to be.

Update

ChemNutra, the company that supplied the wheat gluten imported from China to Menu Foods, has fired back a response to Menu Foods’s law suit:

NEW YORK (Reuters) – ChemNutra on Friday raised the possibility that it was not the only company to supply Menu Foods with wheat gluten, an ingredient linked to a U.S. pet food recall that includes more than 100 brands.

The statement, which comes as ChemNutra said its offices in Las Vegas were searched by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, raises the possibility that the recall could widen further.

Menu Foods has sued ChemNutra for damages and costs associated with the recall, according to the Associated Press.

ChemNutra said that it believed Menu Foods used significantly more wheat gluten every month than the company provided.

“We hope that Menu Foods will disclose its other sources to the FDA to ensure that any suspect product is quarantined,” ChemNutra Chief Executive Steve Miller said.

This echoes a point I’ve been making for some time: until the complete chain of distribution and production has been revealed it’s impossible to determine the scope of the problem.