New Pet Food Worry: Contaminated Rice

Chemical Previously Found In Wheat Bran Turns Up In Second Place

(AP)  An industrial chemical that led to the nationwide recall of more than 100 brands of cat and dog food has turned up in a second pet food ingredient imported from China.

The discovery expands the month-long cascade of recalls to include more brands and varieties of pet foods and treats tainted by the chemical.

"This has exposed that the safety standards for pet foods are not in place in any significant way and the kind of drumbeat, day after day, of recalls has shaken consumers' confidence in the pet food industry's adherence to food safety standards," said Wayne Pacelle, president and chief executive officer of the Humane Society of the United States.

The chemical, melamine, is believed to have contaminated rice protein concentrate used to make a variety of Natural Balance Pet Foods products for both dogs and cats, the Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday.

The FDA has there is no evidence so far to suggest any of the rice protein went to companies that make human food, said Michael Rogers, director of the agency's division of field investigations. But the FDA, which is continuing to update its list of pet food recalls, has not yet accounted for all of the imported ingredients.

Previously, the chemical was found to contaminate wheat gluten used by at least six other pet food and treat manufacturers.

Both ingredients were imported from China, though by different companies and from different manufacturers.

The FDA on Wednesday began reviewing and sampling all rice protein concentrate imported from China, much as the agency has been doing for wheat gluten, Rogers said.

A lawmaker said Wednesday the Chinese have refused to grant visas to FDA inspectors seeking to visit the plants where the ingredients were made. An FDA spokesman later said the visas were not refused but that the agency had not received the necessary invitation letter to get visas.

"It troubles me greatly the Chinese are making it more difficult to understand what led to this pet food crisis," Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., told The Associated Press after meeting with the FDA commissioner, Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach.

A House committee is holding a food safety hearing Tuesday and is expected to discuss the pet food recall.

Natural Balance said it is recalling all its Venison and Brown Rice canned and bagged dog foods, its Venison and Brown Rice dog treats and its Venison and Green Pea dry cat food.

The recalls now include products made by at least seven companies and sold under more than 100 brands.

The Pacoima, Calif., company said recent laboratory tests showed its recalled products contain melamine. Natural Balance believes the source of the contaminant was rice protein concentrate, which the company recently added to the dry venison formulas.

A San Francisco company, Wilbur-Ellis Co., began importing the ingredient in July from a Chinese company, Futian Biology Technology Co. Ltd., according to Wilbur-Ellis president and chief executive John Thacher.

It resold the ingredient to five pet food manufacturers, including Diamond Pet Foods Inc. of Meta, Mo. Diamond manufactured the dry dog and cat foods recalled by Natural Balance, Diamond Pet Foods spokesman Jim Fallon said.

Thacher declined to identify his company's other four customers, except to say two tested the ingredient and found no melamine. Wilbur-Ellis has not heard from the other two, both of whom received limited amounts of the ingredient, Thacher said.

The FDA's tests detected melamine in a rice protein sample; the agency would not disclose the sample's origin.

The source of the melamine remains unclear. It may have contaminated the rice protein through the reuse of dirty bags used to ship the products.

Thacher said an April 4 delivery from Futian Biology included 146 1-ton bags of rice protein concentrate. All were white except for a single pink bag, which was stenciled "melamine."

Wilbur-Ellis isolated the entire shipment at a Portland, Ore. warehouse and sent out samples for testing. The pink bag's contents tested positive for melamine while the two white bags tested were negative, Thacher said.

Futian Biology later told Wilbur-Ellis that a damaged bag was replaced with a clean one, Thacher said. The company then "certified the product was all fine," he added.

The Las Vegas importer of the contaminated Chinese wheat gluten, ChemNutra Inc., that led to the original pet food recall has suggested that spiking a product with melamine can make it to appear to be richer in protein during tests, thus increasing its value.

ChemNutra also imported rice protein concentrate from China, though from another source. Spokesman Steve Stern said the company is testing those shipments.

The recalls began March 16 when Menu Foods recalled 60 million cans of dog and cat food after the deaths of 16 pets, mostly cats, that had eaten its products. The FDA said tests indicated the food was contaminated with melamine, which is used in making plastics and other industrial processes.

Five other companies later recalled pet products also made with wheat gluten tainted by the chemical. The FDA has since blocked Chinese imports of wheat gluten.

Menu Foods continues to add more varieties to its recall list. Menu Foods spokesman Sam Bornstein did not know if the Streetsville, Ontario-based company also used rice protein concentrate as an ingredient in its pet foods, sold under more than 100 different major and store brands.

[BeckyTucker]

Could it be that the philosophies of the US vs China are so different that they condemn us for having and indulging our pets while they can't even have more than one kid?? What better way to punish us for our 'wealth' and consumerism than to poison things we hold dear??

Just a thought

[iceman_1960]

"It troubles me greatly the Chinese are making it more difficult to understand what led to this pet food crisis," Sen. D*ick Durbin, D-Ill., told The Associated Press"

In fairness to the Chinese, there's an awesome language barrier between China and the West.

Case in point, this breaking story:

Chinese translation error blamed for slur on sofa label

April 19, 2007

TORONTO, Ontario (AP) -- Doris Moore was shocked when her new couch was delivered to her Toronto home with a label that used a racial slur to describe the dark brown shade of the upholstery.

The situation was even more alarming for Moore because it was her 7-year-old daughter who pointed out "n*igger brown" on the tag.

"My daughter saw the label and she knew the color brown, but didn't know what the other word meant. She asked, 'Mommy, what color is that?' I was stunned. I didn't know what to say. I never thought that's how she'd learn of that word," Moore said.

The mother complained to the furniture store, which blamed the supplier, who pointed to a computer problem as the source of the derogatory label

Kingsoft Corp., a Chinese software company, acknowledged its translation program was at fault and said it was a regrettable error.

Huang Luoyi, a product manager for the Beijing-based company's translation software, explained that when the Chinese characters for "dark brown" are typed into an older version of its Chinese-English translation software, the offensive description comes up.

[brazlion]

check today's FDA press briefing (live-blogged @ petconnection.com, also reported by sacramento bee) -- the contaminated rice protein may have made its way into pig feed. enjoy any bacon today?

this is the most under-reported food crisis in history, and practically every news outlet is ignoring a potential disaster -- we import a good portion of our food supply, and very little of it is tested. we pretend we have watchdogs on our food industry, but they don't seem to be watching very effectively.

even knowing that 5 companies received the suspect rice protein, the fda refuses to divulge who they were, and insists they must wait until the companies tell them their product is suspect. hello? isn't that the fda's job?

[iceman_1960]

"I now plan to no longer support China and we should all stop buying their cheap products at least until their government can begin to have respect for its own people." - Posted by GunOwnerDan at 04:00 PM : Apr 19, 2007

This will be GunOwnerDan's last post -- in fact his last use of a computer, if he's a man of his word.

All computers in the USA are powered largely by Chinese components.

Hasta la Vista, baby.

[iceman_1960]

Just buy your pet food a month in advance.

Any problems in the batch you next month's bag came from, will hit the news media before you ever open it.

As long as all pet owners don't do that, Rex and Fluffy will be safe from this problem.

[mainemade]

The chinese must of thought they were poisoning our food supply.

[travelperson]

my dog has been sick since decmber 2006 and we changed his food a number of time we also put him on home cooked food chicken and rice and he
threw that up in fact it is still in our lawn because it froze over the winter and is still there. so i wonder what is in that i should pick it up and send to the fda. i think i will do that.

[randalds]

The blame for this lies right at the feet of the under-funded FDA. When Bush came to power he appointed friends and former food company lobbyists to the FDA. He put the foxes in charge of the hen house and slashed the budget for inspections. The FDA is responsible for inspecting BOTH human and pet food as the law says that pet food MUST be able to be consumed safely by humans in this country. It's time to DEMAN a full scale government investigation into why the FDA allowed this to happen, before the next deadly recall is for human food, like baby food for instance. Do Americans REALLY want to wait for that to happen before they get dam*n mad? I hope not.

[gunownerdan]

The leaders of the Chinese government seem to have no respect for life and human rights. This makes China a very dangerous country not only to the world but to its very own people. In several Chinese cities, ALL dogs are being beaten to death with sticks because of the small possibility of having rabies. Not to mention the fact that the Chinese government has complete control of the media and internet whiel forcing their citizens to have mandatory abortions with an almost total disrespect for basic human rights and justice. I now plan to no longer support China and we should all stop buying their cheap products at least until their government can begin to have respect for its own people.

[dragonmouse-2009]

I'm so tired of all this I hope all companies here in the US ban all food product imports from China.

But Plu-eeze...like THAT will ever happen.

[erasmus6]

I myself have nothing against the Chinese people as a whole. But I do have something against the people that are running these plants, contaminating our food etc.

Are the Chinese people not having problems with their food?
Maybe they don't make our food in the same plants as their food?

[candojj1]

Chinese people have a higher standard of living per capital than people in this country. We pale in comparison to what they have accomplished since 1949. You repeat things that you know absolutely nothing about. The Chinese are not evil Communists that are poor and starving. Yes they went through a famine in the 50's during Mao's time. But, that was before their "Great Leap". You sound like those war mongers who sold communism and the Invasion of the Body Snatchers. You idiot. Spoken from a pure bred *** whitey with not a drop of Asian blood born in Brooklyn USA.

[casumma]

When impoverished and hungry people are employed at meager wages then it is not a quantum leap to deduct that wheat and rice might be used to feed China's hungry human population rather than US pets. The plastic may likely have been used as filler to hide the descrepency in volume.

I had a friend who lived in Morroco who left her pet dogs with Morrocan housekeepers. When she returned after six weeks one dog was dead from starvation and the other suffering from extreme malnutrition because the money that was left to buy meat for the dogs was consumed by the caregiveers. The dogs were fed vegetables. Many cultures do not place a high value on pets.

[erasmus6]

We need to stop allowing ANYTHING in the country from China, not just food, there is also a problem with LEAD being in kids jewelry and many other things.
If the FDA can't test everything, then what isn't tested shouldn't be allowed in the country.
The fact that China won't let the FDA in to inspect the plants, should tell you something! They know the FDA would probably drop dead from shock at seeing the filth and contamination!

I also live in Canada and partially agree with rsh_rsh, the U.S. has certainly had their share of problems with contaminated food. Years ago I was told not to eat the eggs and chicken from the U.S. We don't seem to have as many problems with our food. Also people are blaming the Canadian company for the contamination when I believe it was an American company that supplied it to them.

[torontorsh]

I agree, lets ban all imports from foreign countries. In my case, that is imports from the U.S., since I am in Canada, where our food is clearly safer. Lettuce from California, Spinach from California, and other U.S. foodstuff has been found to have ecoli and has caused deaths in Canada, so we should clearly ban ALL imports of food from the U.S. and let those in the U.S. be the only ones to ingest and die from eating locally grown and unhealthy food!

I am being a bit sarcastic, since some posters from inside the U.S. are suggesting just that, but from every country but the U.S. and, frankly, that simply does not make any sense AND violates international trade rules, including NAFTA rules, WTO rules, and common sense.

The problem is that governments, to save money, have cut back on inspection of foodstuff, NOT that foodstuff is imported. Look at problems with meat in the U.S., where unhealthy conditions are found in chicken processing plants, beef processing plants, etc. again and again and again. If there were full time inspectors on duty in those places where problems are found, the problem would likely disappear. That costs money, which would increase the retail price of those food items, so no one wants to spend more, and you get sick or die instead. That is in the U.S. from U.S. grown food items, so stop pointing the finger at imports!

[luigi999-2009]

China is a backward, primitive country with a barbaric view of life - both human & animal. To import any food product from China should be a crime. Our congress needs to get on this and pass legislation than bans imports of food products from China and other unregulated asian countries.

[pattymou]

No more food from foreign countries. Company greed has put us all at risk. Green onions from Mexico, etc. If they want to buy carpets, furniture, clothing, etc. OK. But even some of those are not safe from fires.

[ne_patriot7]

"Help me understand why we need to import agricultural products from China....."
Posted by pdhlondon at 09:57 AM : Apr 19, 2007

The mighty buck... America's products are too expensive thanks to free trade deals that give the competitive edge to China and other countries... our manufacturing industry has already been destroyed by these pacts... and farming is rapidly coming in second in the race to destroy America for the almighty buck.

Corporate greed, plain and simple... the same corporations that back the Republican party and provide this country with its millionaires.

When the US had one freakin' cow with mad cow disease, the world cut off importing American beef.. but not the US... the world can send us any tainted sh*t they want, and we'll beg for more.. but we won't cut off imports... no... that would cost the corporations money..

Welcome to real world of of the rich and poor, with no middle class at all.

[hazelknows]

inventagod

very clever, thanks for the laugh

[gunownerdan]

China is a very dangerous country where the leaders seem to have no respoect for life and human rights. In several Chinese cities, ALL dogs are being beaten to death with sticks because of the small possibility of having rabies. Not to mention the fact that the government has a mandatory abortion program in addition to an almost total disrespect for basic human rights and justice. I now plan to no longer support China and stop buying their cheap products.