Deliberately introduced Melamine into the Pets wheat gluten

[PORKER]

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0704/05/acd.01.html ROBERTS: Now on to our other top story; the tainted pet food. An untold number of cats and dogs may have been exposed.

Tonight, our investigation has led to some troubling new questions.

CNN's Joe Johns is "Keeping Them Honest" tonight.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOE JOHNS, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The day would end with a provocative question: Was the pet food accidentally contaminated. Or was it deliberate?

But it began with another recall, this time, an Alabama company that makes dog biscuits. It received some of the suspect wheat gluten containing a chemical known as melamine, believed toxic to dogs and cats. The FDA said recall of the products manufactured by Sunshine Mills pet food company was delayed, because Sunshine apparently got its Chinese wheat gluten from a middleman distributor that had purchased the wheat gluten from another U.S. supplier, a company called ChemNutra.

DR. STEPHEN F. SUNDLOF, DIRECTOR, FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION CENTER FOR VETERINARY MEDICINE: So, it was a little circuitous route, took us a little longer to trace that all down. But now we believe that we have accounted for all the wheat gluten that came from China, that shipment that is -- that is high in melamine, that we have accounted for all of it that has come into this country. And -- and, by the way, it all went into pet food.

JOHNS: Meaning it did not enter the human food supply chain.

How and where the melamine got into the wheat gluten is still a mystery. But the investigation took a new turn today, when the FDA told CNN it is looking whether there could have been a profit motive for deliberately introducing melamine into the wheat gluten. In other words, it might not have been an accident and may have been about money.

(on camera): That's right. Until now, the assumption has been that this was an accidental contamination, because melamine is used in plastics and pesticides, and has no business in pet food. However, the chemical could potentially be used to raise protein levels in the gluten, which could increase the price or make it easier to sell.

SUNDLOF: That's -- that's one of the theories that we have. In fact, that's one of the ones that we are pursuing, because, as you indicated, adding something that would increase the protein content of the wheat gluten would make it more valuable. So, that's -- that's a distinct possibility. But it's -- it's only one theory at this time.

JOHNS (voice-over): All the companies, including the company in China, have denied adding melamine to the wheat gluten in the pet food.

The FDA also that the number of pet food complaints it's received since the start of the scare is now at 12,000, the volume it would normally get over a two-year period.

In announcing the latest recall, Sunshine Mills said, no dog illnesses or deaths have been traced to its dog biscuits, which contain 1 percent or less of wheat gluten. Pet owners aren't the only ones watching. Plans for hearings in the Senate have now firmed up.

SEN. RICHARD DURBIN (D), ILLINOIS: What's happened over the last several weeks is unacceptable. What we have found is a threat to the lives of pets, dogs and cats, across America, a threat that should have been minimized and maybe even avoided.

JOHNS: When asked whether the worst is over, the FDA says it thinks so. The number of dead pets as a result of all this remains unclear. Officially, FDA only confirmed 16, though the real number is likely to be much higher.

Joe Johns, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

 

[Kathy]

I read an article that said that with the selective breeding of wheat, the gluten content over the last 30 years has increased 5 fold. Bakers love it, but those with allergies and sensitivities suffer. Most don't realize that over the years the gluten content has increased so much.

 

[katrina]

We are sitting on high protein wheat right now because Con-agra and the others do not want it....... Matter of fact they are discounting high protien wheat.....

 

[Econ101]

We are sitting on high protein wheat right now because Con-agra and the others do not want it....... Matter of fact they are discounting high protien wheat.....

Why buy your wheat when the big companies can buy cheap stuff from China, put in chemicals that make it look like a good product based on today's definitions of protein, and sell it cheaper?

Incredibly stupid system we have set up.

 

[Sandhusker]

We are sitting on high protein wheat right now because Con-agra and the others do not want it....... Matter of fact they are discounting high protien wheat.....

Why buy your wheat when the big companies can buy cheap stuff from China, put in chemicals that make it look like a good product based on today's definitions of protein, and sell it cheaper?

Incredibly stupid system we have set up.

It's a system set up by misguided priorities.

 

[katrina]

Yup..... Only time we can see good prices is at the exspense of someone else.... droughts and such......

 

[Anonymous]

We are sitting on high protein wheat right now because Con-agra and the others do not want it....... Matter of fact they are discounting high protien wheat.....

We need a few more in Congress that still have some concept of the realities out there:

http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2007/04/09/news/state/20-tester.txt

 

[PORKER]

Pet-food recall puts us on notice


By DR. MICHAEL FOX DVM
United Feature Syndicate
Sydney, a black-headed caique, catches a ride on the shoulders of Jake, a yellow Lab. The pets belong to Kirk, Kelly, Luke and Will Childress of Corpus Christi.
Show off your pet by sending a photo to Spot the Pet, Houston Chronicle Features Dept., P.O. Box 4260, Houston TX 77210 or e-mail a high-resolution JPEG to [email protected]. Include your name and hometown, your pet's name and a daytime phone number. Sorry, but we won't be able to return photos.

Dear Readers:

Millions of concerned pet owners recently became aware of the 60 million packages of contaminated, poisonous cat and dog food being recalled. This recall involves almost 100 different brand names, including big ones like Iams, Eukanuba, Nutro, Hills and Purina, and store brands like PetSmart and Wal-Mart. (Details are posted by the contracted manufacturer on www.menufoods.com/recall.)

I would like to hear from readers who have had to take their animals to their veterinarians for emergency treatment — and the diagnosis and outcome.

This debacle of the commercial pet-food industry puts us all on notice. Better quality controls, oversight and testing are called for, but let's be realistic. Look at the high frequency of massive recalls of human foods, especially ground beef and poultry. Costs aside, no system of mass production can be fail-safe. Recycling human food-industry byproducts and products considered unfit for human consumption into livestock feed and processed pet food is a risk-management challenge.

The New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets has announced that rat poison in contaminated wheat from China was responsible for the suffering and deaths of an as-yet-unknown number of cats and dogs across North America and other countries importing contaminated pet food. The poison is a chemical compound called aminopterin.

This raises even more serious implications for the multinational pet-food industry, which is clearly outsourcing for ingredient supplies to foreign countries where human-food and animal-feed quality controls and inspections are dubious at best; and where, as in the United States, food commodities considered unfit for human consumption are processed into livestock feed and pet food.

Clearly, all people who have suffered the loss of their companion animals, have costly veterinary expenses and have the continued costs of medical care for pets that survived should be compensated fully by all the pet-food companies that contracted with Menu Foods Income Fund. But there can never be adequate compensation for the animals' suffering or the anguish over an inexplicably sick animal and the emotional loss of a beloved animal companion.

Are there no limits to what the United States will import from China? Quite possibly, the wheat came originally from another country and was a stockpiled commodity on the world market that deteriorated in storage, where rats had access and were poisoned.

What is disturbing in this instance is the revelation that brand names don't mean much after all. One company in Canada, Menu Foods Income Fund, was contracted to put this stuff together to be sold by the big pet-food companies and megastores under different labels for dogs and cats. So whom do we trust?

That is why I advocate cooking home-prepared food for cats and dogs, using whole-food ingredients of known origin, as do many other holistic veterinarians, who see a variety of health problems clear up when the animals are fed natural, whole-food, organic diets. It is ironic that many companion animals that develop various diet-related health problems, often attributable to being fed processed pet foods, are put on costly manufactured prescription diets, many of which contain ingredients that should not be given to animals, sick or healthy.

For more insights into food safety and the multinational food industry, see my book Eating with Conscience: The Bioethics of Food