Pet food scare may bring trade reform to China

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2007:

 

 

Pet food scare may bring trade reform to China

 

BEIJING--Furor over the deaths of cats and dogs who were

poisoned by adulterated and mislabeled Chinese-made pet food

ingredients may have protected millions of people as well as animals

worldwide.

Chinese citizens themselves, and their pets, may be the

most numerous beneficiaries of new food safety regulations introduced

by the Beijing government on May 9, 2007.

With 1.5 billion citizens, China is the world's most

populous nation--and also has more than twice as many pets as any

other nation. Officially, China had more than 150 million pet dogs

as of mid-2005. China is also believed to have from 300 to 450

million pet cats, but the Chinese cat population has never been

formally surveyed.

The first announced Chinese regulatory changes covered only

exports, but within hours the rules governing items sold on the

domestic market were strengthened as well.

Summarized Daniel Martin, Beijing correspondent for Agence

France-Presse, " The department in charge of inspecting export

products said it had instructed its offices across China to increase

inspections and supervision. Separately, China's State Council, or

cabinet, announced it had ordered more inspections of all plant and

aquaculture products, and increased control of pesticides, chemical

fertilizers, drugs, and animal feed. It also called for better

systems of official responsibility over food safety, and for

monitoring the movement of food products.

" China has ordered such crackdowns in the past amid health

scares, " Martin acknowledged. Follow-up has then been lax.

This time, however, the Beijing government reinforced the

message by sentencing former State Food & Drug Administration chief

Zheng Xiaoyu to death for taking bribes and dereliction of duty,

while heading the agency from 1998 to 2005. The sentence was

announced on May 28, 2007. Zheng Xiaoyu, 62, was the first

Chinese official of his rank to receive the death penalty for

corruption since 2000.

The melamine contamination issue, unlike most previous

adulteration cases involving Chinese-made products, spread far

beyond China and the small developing nations which have previously

been victimized.

This time the adulteration hit throughout the U.S., Canada,

South Africa, and Puerto Rico. From 15 to 20 million pet caretakers

purchased melamine-tainted food for their animals. In excess of 60

million pet food containers marketed under more than 150 labels were

recalled.

More than two months after the recalls began, on March 16,

2007, the pet food industry was still announcing recalls of

additional products found to contain melamine.

Two Chinese companies, Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology

Development and Binzhou Futian Biology Technology, are believed to

have exported wheat and rice glutens that were deliberately

contaminated with melamine, a coal derivative, to fool purchasers

who used a test to measure protein content that measures nitrogen

emissions. Of no nutritional value to animals, melamine is commonly

used as a nitrogen-rich fertilizer, and as an ingredient of hard

plastics.

Melamine-tainted pet food is believed to have killed at least

1,950 cats and 2,200 dogs in the U.S. alone, the Food & Drug

Administration estimates, based on consumer claims. The Banfield

veterinary hospital chain has put the possible toll at as many as

7,000 animals.

The FDA on May 1, 2007 assigned chief food division medical

officer David Acheson, M.D., to supervise improving food safety

surveillance. By May 4, Acheson was pondering what to do about 20

million chickens and 6,000 pigs who had been given feed made in part

from recalled pet food.

" About 2.5 million to 3 million broiler chickens raised on

those farms [that bought the tainted feed] already have been

slaughtered and most likely have been consumed, " Washington Post

staff writer Rick Weiss disclosed.

About 100,000 breeder chickens were culled.

Usually an animal who has been fed adulterated food is

considered unfit for human consumption, USDA spokesperson Keith

Williams told Weiss. However, after preliminary tests found no

measurable traces of melamine in the chickens, and found that they

appeared to be healthy, the USDA, FDA and Environmental Protection

Agency produced a joint risk assessment, determined that the

potential human exposure risk would be one 2,500th of the level that

might cause harm, and released the remaining chickens for slaughter

and sale as usual.

" We do not believe there is any significant threat to human

health, " Acheson concluded.

The pigs were held for further testing.

 

Bulldozed evidence

 

In China, meanwhile, " We visited the two facilities, " FDA

Office of International Programs deputy director Walter Batts told

reporters, " but there is essentially nothing to be found. They've

been closed down, machinery dismantled, with nothing to get access

to. "

The Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Develop-ment Company

plant manager Mao Lijun was reportedly detained by Chinese

authorities.

" Farmers in this poor rural area about 400 miles northwest of

Shanghai had complained to local government officials since 2004 that

Mao's factory was spewing noxious fumes that made their eyes tear up

and the poplar trees nearby shed their leaves prematurely, " said the

Los Angeles Times.

" Yet no one stopped Mao's company from churning out bags of

food powders and belching smoke-until last month when, in the middle

of the night, bulldozers arrived and tore down the facility. It

wasn't authorities who finally acted: Mao himself razed the brick

factory, days before the U.S. FDA investigators arrived in China on

a mission to track down the source of the tainted pet food

ingredients. "

Elaborated New York Times China correspondent David Barboza,

" Xuzhou Anying shipped more than 700 tons of wheat gluten labeled as

non-food products this year through a company called Suzhou Textiles

Silk Light and Industrial Products, " which was denied by Suzhou

Textiles.

" Despite denials of knowing anything about melamine

contamination, " Barboza continued, " Xuzhou appears to have sought

to buy large supplies of melamine, even in the weeks after the pet

food recall. The company posted more than a dozen ads on the

Internet seeking melamine scrap.

Henan Xinxiang Huaxing Chemical Company manager Li Xiuping

acknowledged to Barboza that the ads were unusual. " Our chemical

products are mostly used for additives, not animal feed, " Li

Xiuping said. " Melamine is mainly used in the chemical industry,

but can also be used to make cakes. "

Commented Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director at the

Center for Science in the Public Interest, " The real issue is not

melamine, but that this problem exposes such a huge gap in consumer

protection. It's not this event, but the next event that people

should be concerned about. "

 

Deadly toothpaste

 

Food and consumer product safety in the U.S., Canada, the

European Union, and other developed nations has been maintained for

decades by semi-harmonized regulations which require that ingredients

be subjected to extensive testing before products using them can be

marketed.

Animal tests are still the mainstay of product safety

evaluation. Animals are used primarily to study total systemic

response. If animals exhibit adverse effects, non-animal tests may

be used to zero in on the problem.

While more than 40 non-animal testing methods are now used to

assess specific toxic responses, developing a non-animal test that

accurately mimics the complexity of a whole living organism has

proved elusive.

Whether animal or non-animal tests are employed, the safety

determination process depends upon manufacturers honestly disclosing

product ingredients, and then not varying the formula once a

substance is put into production.

Even seemingly minor substitutions of ingredients can change

product safety--like substituting diethylene glycol, a cheap but

potentially deadly chemical, for glycerin, which is chemically

similar, but is safe, and is much more expensive.

Diethylene glycol is the sweet-tasting toxic ingredient of

many common brands of automotive antifreeze that are commonly misused

to poison animals. Laws have been passed in several

states--including Arizona in 2007--to require that bittering agents

be added to diethylene and ethylene glycol products to prevent

accidental ingestion.

FDA spokesperson Doug Arbesfeld disclosed on May 23, 2007

that the FDA has begun to check all imports of toothpaste made in

China, after diethylene glycol was found in Chinese-made toothpaste

sold in the Dominican Republic, Panama, and Australia.

China is the second-largest exporter of toothpaste to the

United States behind Canada, Arbesfeld indicated.

The FDA had no indication that diethylene glycol had been

used in toothpaste sold in the U.S., but became concerned after

Dominican health officials seized 36,000 tubes of toothpaste

suspected of containing diethylene glycol.

" Included were tubes of toothpaste with bubble gum and

strawberry flavors marketed for children and sold under the name of

Mr. Cool Junior, " reported The New York Times.

Dominican Republic secretary of health Bautista Rojas Gomez

said that the toothpaste actually listed diethylene glycol as an

ingredient, and was found in stores and warehouses across the

country. There were indications that some might have been sold in

Haiti.

Panamanian officials seized 6,000 tubes of the same

toothpaste several days earlier, sold under the brand names Mr. Cool

and Excel. Samples reportedly contained up to 4.6% diethylene

glycol. Recalled New York Times reporters David Barboza and Walt

Bogdanich, " Diethylene glycol is the same poison that the Panamanian

government unwittingly mixed into cold medicine last year, killing

at least 100 people. In that case, the poison was falsely labeled

as glycerin, a harmless syrup. It originated in China, shipping

records show. "

A manager at Goldcredit International, the first Chinese

firm to market Mr. Cool toothpaste, told Barboza that, " If

diethylene glycol were poisonous, " he said, " all Chinese people would

have been poisoned, " because Chinese manufacturers had been

substituting diethylene glycol for glycerin in toothpastes made for

domestic consumption for many years.

In fact, many Chinese people have been poisoned by similar

substitutions. On May 28, 2007 the China News Service disclosed

that the families of 10 people who died from injections of fake and

tainted medicine at the Zhongshan University #9 Hospital in Guangzhou

have sued the same company that made the diethylene glycol sold to

Panama as glycerin. The families are seeking damages of $2.6 million.

 

Frozen seafood

 

Only one day after the FDA began checking toothpaste, the

Hong Chang Corporation of Santa Fe Springs, California, announced a

three-state recall of yet another apparently mislabeled product

originating in China, in this case frozen " monkfish " sold in

Illinois, California, and Hawaii. Two Chicago residents who ate a

soup made from the " monkfish " suffered tetrodotoxin poisoning,

indicating that the " monkfish " were actually pufferfish. The

pufferfish poison is not destroyed by cooking or freezing.

Michael Doyle, director of the Center for Food Safety at the

University of Georgia, and former FDA science advisory board chair,

warned Boston Globe staff reporter Diedtra Henderson that that

biggest threat to public health from Chinese food products might come

from pond-raised shrimp-- not because of either adulteration or

mislabeling, but due to a production method that permits rapid

transmission of diseases from poultry to humans with shrimp as

intermediate hosts.

In China, Doyle explained, shrimp are produced on

" hundreds of thousands of little farms. They have small ponds.

Over the ponds--in not all cases, but in many cases--they'll have

chicken cages. It might be like 20,000 chickens in cages. The

chicken feces feeds the shrimp. "

The USDA has found that up to 10% of shrimp imported from

China contains salmonella, Doyle said.

" Even more worrisome are shrimp imported from China that

contain antibiotics that no amount of cooking can neutralize, "

Henderson wrote. " Last month alone, the FDA rejected 51 shipments

of catfish, eel, shrimp, and tilapia from China because of such

contaminants as salmonella, veterinary drugs, and nitrofuran, a

cancer-causing chemical. "

Michael Gregor, M.D., warned in his 2006 book Bird Flu: A

Virus of Our Own Hatching that the combination of intensive

confinement poultry production with aquaculture in southern China

could become the incubator and vector for spreading the deadly avian

influenza H5N1 worldwide. With the right mutation, H5N1 could

spread as far and fast as frozen shrimp could be flown to restaurants

and supermarkets.

" The safety of food imports from China extends beyond the pet

food recall, " Senators Richard Durbin of Connecticut and Rosa

DeLauro of Illinois warned in an open letter to U.S. Trade Ambassador

Susan Schwab.

" China is especially poor at meeting international food

safety standards, which is particularly disturbing considering that

China exported approximately $2.26 billion in agricultural products

to the United States in 2006.

" This issue is particularly important, " Durbin and DeLauro

continued, " as U.S. agricultural imports [from all sources] are

predicted to reach a record $69 billion in 2007. If we are to

continue at this rate, we must ask important questions about the food

safety standards of our trade partners to ensure our nation's public

health is not compromised. "

Durbin and DeLauro proposed combining elements of the FDA and

USDA to create a single unified food and drug safety agency.

Meanwhile, Durbin and DeLauro introduced a budget bill amendment

which would form a computerized reporting system for contaminants in

imported products, and would include early-warning coverage of pet

food.

Durbin also proposed a $183 million increase next year in the

FDA food safety budget, now about $470 million.

State-level legislation proposed to address issues raised by

the melamine episode includes two New Jersey bills which would help

protect pets from contaminated pet food and help pet keepers to

recoup the cost of treating pets for health problems caused by the

contamination.

ChemNutra, of Las Vegas, the original importer of the

melamine-spiked glutens that ended up in pet food, scheduled a Pet

Food Ingredients Safety Summit for July 14, 2007 in Las Vegas, at

which manufacturers, ingredient importers, and analysis

laboratories are to draft proposed global import standards for pet

food components. --Merritt Clifton

 

 

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

Telephone: 360-579-2505

Fax: 360-579-2575

E-mail: anmlpepl

Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

 

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