Here is the original IHT story. Someone was smart enough to save
it.
Kiki Says:
April 29th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
Good thing I e-mailed it to myself as a text.
Additive that tainted U.S. pet food is commonly used in China
By David Barboza and Alexei Barrionuevo The New York Times
Sunday, April 29, 2007
American food safety regulators trying to figure out how an
industrial chemical called melamine contaminated so much pet food
in the United States might come to this heavily polluted city in
Shandong Province in the northern part of the country.
Here at the Shandong Mingshui Great Chemical Group factory, huge
boiler vats are turning coal into melamine, which is used to create
plastics and fertilizer.
But the leftover melamine scrap, small acorn-sized chunks of white
rock, is then being sold to local entrepreneurs, who say they
secretly mix a powdered form of the scrap into animal feed to
artificially enhance the protein level.
The melamine powder has been dubbed “fake protein” and is used to
deceive those who raise animals into thinking they are buying feed
that provides higher nutrition value.
“It just saves money,” says a manager at an animal feed factory
here. “Melamine scrap is added to animal feed to boost the protein
level.”
The practice is widespread in China. For years animal feed sellers
have been able to cheat buyers by blending the powder into feed
with little regulatory supervision, according to interviews with
melamine scrap traders and agricultural workers here.
But now, melamine is at the center of a massive, multinational pet
food recall after it was linked earlier this month to the deaths
and injuries of thousands of cats and dogs in the United States and
South Africa.
No one knows exactly how melamine - which had not been believed to
be particularly toxic - became so fatal in pet food, but its
presence in any form of American food is illegal.
U.S. regulators are now headed to China to figure out why pet food
ingredients imported from here, including wheat gluten, were
contaminated with high levels of the chemical.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has banned imports of wheat
gluten from China and ordered the recall of over 60 million
packages of pet food. And last week, the agency opened a criminal
investigation in the case and searched the offices of at least one
pet food supplier.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture also stepped in Thursday,
ordering more than 6,000 hogs to be quarantined or slaughtered
after some of the pet food ingredients laced with melamine were
accidentally sent to hog farms in eight states, including California.
Scientists are now trying to determine whether melamine could be
harmful to human health.
The huge pet food recall is raising questions in the United States
about regulatory controls at a time when food supplies are
increasingly being sourced globally. Some experts complain that the
FDA is understaffed and underfunded, making it incapable of
safeguarding America’s food supply.
“They have fewer people inspecting product at the ports than ever
before,” says Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety for
the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington. “Until
China gets programs in place to verify the safety of their
products, they need to be inspected by U.S. inspectors. This open-
door policy on food ingredients is an open invitation for an attack
on the food supply, either intentional or unintentional.”
The pet food case is also putting China’s agricultural exports
under greater scrutiny because the country’s dubious food safety
record and history of excessive antibiotic and pesticide use.
In recent years, for instance, China’s food safety scandals have
involved everything from fake baby milk formulas and soy sauce made
from human hair, to instances where cuttlefish were soaked in
calligraphy ink to improve their color and eels were fed
contraceptive pills to make them grow long and slim.
China’s government disputes any suggestion that melamine from the
country could have killed pets. But Friday, regulators here banned
the use of melamine in vegetable proteins made for export or for
use in domestic food supplies.
Yet it is clear from visiting this region of northern China is that
for years melamine has been quietly mixed into Chinese animal feed
and then sold to unsuspecting farmers as protein-rich pig, poultry
and fish feed.
Many animal feed operators advertise on the Internet seeking to
purchase melamine scrap. And melamine scrap producers and traders
said in recent interviews that they often sell to animal feed makers.
“Many companies buy melamine scrap to make animal feed, such as
fish feed,” says Ji Denghui, general manager of the Fujian Sanming
Dinghui Chemical Company. “I don’t know if there’s a regulation on
it. Probably not. No law or regulation says ‘don’t do it,’ so
everyone’s doing it. The laws in China are like that, aren’t they?
If there’s no accident, there won’t be any regulation.”
Most local feed companies do not admit that they use melamine. But
last Friday here in Zhangqiu, a fast-growing industrial city
southeast of Beijing, a pair of animal feed producers explained in
great detail how they purchase low-grade wheat, corn, soybean or
other proteins and then mix in small portions of nitrogen-rich
melamine, whose chemical properties give a bag of animal feed an
inflated protein level under standard tests.
Melamine is the new scam of choice, they say, because urea -
another nitrogen-rich chemical that works similarly - is illegal
for use in pig and poultry feed and can be easily tested for in
China as well as the United States.
“If you add it in small quantities, it won’t hurt the animals,”
said one animal feed entrepreneur whose name is being withheld to
protect him from prosecution.
The man - who works in a small animal feed operation that consists
of a handful of storage and mixing areas - said he has mixed
melamine into animal feed for years.
He said he was not currently using melamine, which is actually made
from urea. But he then pulled out a plastic bag containing what he
said was melamine powder and said he could dye it any color.
Asked whether he could create an animal feed and melamine brew, he
said yes, he has access to huge supplies of melamine. Using
melamine-spiked pet food ingredient was not a problem, he said,
even thought the product would be weak in protein.
“Pets are not like pigs or chickens,” he said casually, explaining
that cheating them on protein won’t matter. “They don’t need to
grow fast.”
The feed seller makes a heftier profit because the substitute
melamine scrap is much cheaper than purchasing soy, wheat or corn
protein.
“It’s true you can make a lot more profit by putting melamine in,”
said a second animal feed seller here in Zhangqiu. “Melamine will
cost you about $1.20 per ton for each protein count whereas real
protein costs you about $6, so you can see the difference.”
Few people outside of agriculture know about melamine here. The
Chinese media, which is strictly censored, has not reported much
about melamine or the pet food recall overseas. And no one in
agriculture here seems to believe that melamine is particularly
harmful to animals or pets in small doses.
A man named Jing, who works in the sales department at the Shandong
Mingshui Great Chemical Group, said Friday that melamine scrap
prices had been rising but he was not aware of how the company’s
product was being used.
“We have an auction for melamine scrap every three months,” he
said. “I haven’t heard of it being added to animal feed. It’s not
for animal feed.”
David Barboza reported from Zhangqiu and Alexei Barrionuevo
reported from Chicago. Rujun Shen also contributed reporting.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/29/news/food.php I’ve NEVER
seen anything like this before!