NYT: Filler In Animal Feed Is Open Secret In China

[Hissyspit]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/business/worldbusiness/30food.html?hp

Filler in Animal Feed Is Open Secret in China

By DAVID BARBOZA and ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
Published: April 30, 2007
ZHANGQIU, China, April 28 — As American food safety regulators head to China to investigate how a chemical made from coal found its way into pet food that killed dogs and cats in the United States, workers in this heavily polluted northern city openly admit that the substance is routinely added to animal feed as a fake protein.

For years, producers of animal feed all over China have secretly supplemented their feed with the substance, called melamine, a cheap additive that looks like protein in tests, even though it does not provide any nutritional benefits, according to melamine scrap traders and agricultural workers here.

- snip -

The link to China has set off concerns among critics of the Food and Drug Administration that ingredients in pet food as well as human food, which are increasingly coming from abroad, are not being adequately screened.

“They have fewer people inspecting product at the ports than ever before,” says Caroline Smith DeWaal, the 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.”

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[shenmue]

1. My dog got sick over this weekend...

We can't be sure if it was her food, but we started fixing her fresh stuff anyway, just to be extra careful.

[magellan]

3. If you think it may have been the food, please take her to the vet

Was she eating something with wheat/rice/corn gluten in it?

[magellan]

2. For YEARS they've been doing this?

Then why has it suddenly spiked and caused sickened and dead pets? How long have we been importing glutens from China?

[orleans]

4. and look at all the other food this gluten shit is in. if it's in pet food

what is to say it isn't in any other food?

republic controlled government: making government suck for 6 years.

[magellan]

5. Oh, it'll suck a lot longer than the 6 years we've already endured

We'll be facing the fallout of their cheap and cheery regime for decades to come.

[tinfoilinfor2005]

6. Strange thing happened with my cat...she totally refused to touch the last bag

of Purina cat chow that I brought her. She has been eating it for years. Wouldn't touch a morsel. But according to the Purina company, their cat chow is 100% safe. Since my cat does have a picky side, my daughter said, "Give me the cat chow. My cat will eat anything."
So yesterday my daughter said, "Strangest thing, mom. Abigail wouldn't touch that cat chow either. In fact she dug through it to get to her regular food underneath the Purina stuff."

Strange...

[orleans]

9. have you checked the ingredients in this?

on the website the cat chow in the green bag has corn gluten meal in it

the blue bag, complete formula, has corn gluten & corn gluten meal

the kitten formula has corn gluten meal

red bag (7+) has corn meal and corn gluten meal

i think the three "problem" ingredients in these pet foods are wheat gluten, corn gluten, and rice protein concentrate

we should avoid all of these because we don't know where these manufacturers are getting their ingredients--and it's probably from fucking china!

on edit: you said: "strange..."
but maybe it's not so strange. your cat was clearly telling you something. and your daughter's cat was clearly telling her something as well. i'd put that food in the garbage.

[Shallah Kali]

13. Similar thing happened to me - I offered a 'safe' can of Iams - no cuts and gravy

no wheat - to my cats. They sniffed it and left. It was then I rememberd how last fall my kittens who I was feeding Nutro kitten suddenly stopped eating when before they could gobble it down. I simply stopped buying it. Maybe some pets are super tasters and super smellers beyond the norm and can detect things others can't. back when my family's well was contaminated with MTBE I could taste something wrong months before I could convince my parents to shell out $75 to have the water tested for it. It wasn't until the local paper had an article mentioning that some people could smell and taste it when most can't that they finally believed me enough to test.

[MountainLaurel]

16. Funny, that

Reminds me of stories about farmers whose cows refused to eat feed made from genetically modified corn.

The animals are a lot brighter than the humans here.

[Hissyspit]

7. .

[Critters2]

8. I'm completely boycotting all goods made in China!

And lemme tell ya! That ain't easy!!

Poison our pets, will ya?! :grr:

[Hissyspit]

10. .

[orleans]

11. WHEN WILL OUR CONGRESS ACT ON THIS MATTER??

they held a hearing. NOW WHAT?

[Shallah Kali]

15. Last I read Durbin and others were to put up legislation giving the FDA recall power

and if I remember correctly the ability to fine companies.

[orleans]

19. what is recall power? and fining companies doesn't sound very

effective either. (even a few million dollar fine is nothing to many companies whose bad behavior racks up major profits--sometimes a million dollars is just a drop in the bucket)

look what's happening with all this. they need to stop the imports from china and check this crap out now!

(drives me crazy when there is this life or death emergency going on and everyone has been sitting on their butts for three fucking months)

[formercia]

12. If they can't kill Social Security

they will make sure the poor and working class don't live long enough to collect.

[Shallah Kali]

14. Most of the world's vitamins made in china - article

U.S. must address risk of untraceable, low-quality food ingredients from China
http://www.twincities.com/opinion/ci_5733539

That it was pet food that got tainted - and that relatively few pets were harmed - is pure happenstance. Earlier this spring, Europe narrowly averted disaster when a batch of vitamin A from China was found to be contaminated with Enterobacter sakazakii, which has been proved to cause infant deaths. Thankfully, the defective vitamin A had not yet been incorporated into infant formula. Next time we may not be so fortunate.

Currently, most of the world's vitamins are manufactured in China. Unable to compete, the last U.S. plant making vitamin C closed a year ago. One of Europe's largest citric acid plants shut last winter, and only one vitamin C manufacturer operates in the West. Given China's cheap labor, artificially low prices and the unfair competitive climate it has foisted on the industry, few Western producers of food ingredients can survive much longer.

Western companies have had to invest heavily in Chinese facilities. These Western-owned plants follow strict standards and are generally better managed than their locally owned counterparts. Nevertheless, 80 percent of the world's vitamin C is now manufactured in China - much of it unregulated and some of it of questionable quality.

SNIP

To protect consumers here, we must revise our regulatory approaches. The first option is to institute regulations, based on the European model, to ensure that all food ingredients are thoroughly traceable. We should impose strict liability on manufacturers that fail to enforce traceability standards.

The above was written by a former head of NutraSweet. When someone associated with THAT stuff is worried it makes me really :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared:

[jazzjunkysue]

17. So, what do I buy for my dog? What's safe, now, in May? Help! n/t.

[Shallah Kali]

18. ChinaDaily | More than 10% of arable land polluted (heavy metals, more)

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-04/23/content_856803.htm

Contaminated land suffered from polluted water, excessive fertilizer, heavy metals and solid wastes, the official said.

The ministry acknowledged that heavy metals alone had contaminated 12 million tons of grain and caused losses of 20 billion yuan ($2.6 billion) each year, adding that polluted grain would ultimately be a health hazard, Xinhua reported.