Recall Support

moose53 · 05-02-2007, 09:30 PM

This is gonna turn out to be bigger than anyone ever thought.

from:
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Quote:

U.S. agency investigating tainted pet food says Chinese firm dodged inspection

By David Barboza

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

SHANGHAI: A Chinese company accused of selling contaminated wheat gluten to pet food suppliers in the United States failed to disclose to China's export authorities that it was shipping food or feed to the United States, thereby avoiding having its goods inspected, according to U.S. regulators.

Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development, one of two Chinese companies at the center of the massive pet food recall after thousands of animals were killed and sickened, had shipped more than 700 tons of wheat gluten labeled as "nonfood" products earlier this year through a third party, a Chinese textile company.

The "nonfood" designation meant the company's shipments were not subject to mandatory inspection by the Chinese government.

The details of the case, some of which were disclosed Friday in a circular released by the Food and Drug Administration in the United States, are just the latest clues that Chinese feed suppliers may have been intentionally disguising the contents of their goods.

FDA officials are now visiting China, seeking more information about how and why an industrial chemical used in plastics and as fertilizer got mixed into pet food ingredients.

The pet food recall is threatening to turn into a major trade issue because of mounting worries in the U.S. Congress about the safety of China's agricultural exports to the United States, the ability of American regulators to protect the country's food supply and the slow pace of efforts by the Chinese government to aid the investigation.

American regulators admit that six weeks after one of the biggest pet food recalls in U.S. history, they still do not know who in China manufactured the contaminated pet food ingredients or where in China the contamination took place.

Though the agency has named two Chinese companies as the suppliers of the tainted vegetable protein, regulators suspect the companies may not have been making the feed but buying it from other feed manufacturers in China. Those producers, regulators believe, may have intentionally mixed melamine into the feed to artificially inflate the level of protein in the bags to meet pet food requirements.

"Records relating to the importation of these products indicate that these two firms had manufactured the ingredients in question," the FDA said. "There is strong evidence, however, that these firms are not the actual manufacturers. Moreover, despite many weeks of investigation, it is still unknown who the actual manufacturer or manufacturers of the contaminated products imported from China are," the FDA said.

Worried that the contaminant could continue to enter the United States and also seep into the human food supply through additives, regulators have blocked all Chinese imports of wheat gluten and warned importers to screen nearly every other kind of food and feed additive entering the country from China, including corn gluten and soy protein.

Last week, the FDA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture jointly warned consumers that melamine had found its way into hog and chicken feed and encouraged producers to destroy the animals, even though there was no clear evidence that consuming meat from the animals was a danger to human health.

American regulators are now under growing pressure to ensure the safety of human and pet food and to get to the bottom of the melamine scare.

What began as a pet food recall on March 16 involving two factories working for a single pet food maker, Menu Foods, has now expanded to include some of America's leading pet food brands and over 60 million pet food packages.

The two Chinese companies named by American regulators last month have said little publicly since the recall. Both are based in eastern China, near one of the country's biggest wheat growing regions and also one of the centers of melamine production.

Melamine is an industrial chemical that animal feed producers here say has been intentionally mixed into feed to cheat farmers into thinking they are buying higher protein meal, even though the chemical has no nutritional value. A similar practice took place in the United States and in China involving a related compound called urea, but that compound is now more widely tested for and banned from certain feeds in the United States.

"This was standard stuff after World War II, when animal feed was adulterated with urea," said Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food and public health at New York University. "This is simple greed. It's like they're adding water to the wheat gluten."

Contacted a few weeks ago, Xuzhou Anying officials denied having any knowledge of how melamine got into one of their packages and insisted that they never exported any wheat gluten to the United States.

But Xuzhou Anying advertised on the Internet as recently as late March seeking to buy large quantities of melamine scrap. "We urgently need a lot of melamine scrap," Xuzhou said in a posting March 21 on a trading Web site called EC21, leaving a cellphone number.

The Chinese government has told American regulators, however, that Xuzhou is not a manufacturer of wheat gluten but purchased its products from 25 different manufacturers.

ChemNutra, the Las Vegas pet food supplier that bought the wheat gluten from Xuzhou and then resold it to pet food makers in the United States, also said it was led to believe Xuzhou was the manufacturer of the product. But ChemNutra officials also say that they received the shipments of wheat gluten through a third party, a company called Suzhou Textiles Silk Light & Industrial Products. A spokesman for Suzhou Textiles denied that the company exported wheat gluten to the United States.

The other supplier of contaminated protein named by regulators is Binzhou Futian Biology Technology, which says that it supplies soy, corn and other proteins and has strong sales in the United States, Europe and Southeast Asia. The company also declined comment.

The Chinese government said last week that it was unlikely melamine could have harmed so many pets in the United States. But on Friday, China banned melamine from use in any vegetable protein for export or for use in the domestic food market.

The FDA says that it has received reports that more than 4,000 cats and dogs died as a result of eating pet food that may have been laced with melamine.

Scientists are now struggling to determine why melamine, a chemical that is not believed to be toxic, may have turned poisonous. Some scientists theorize that melamine mixed with other melamine-like compounds, such as cyanuric acid, to create a poisonous substance.

That possibility may be all the more likely because many animal feed producers in China are not using pure melamine but much cheaper melamine scrap, sold as a waste product from melamine production.

Copyright © 2007 The International Herald Tribune |
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Chemar · 05-03-2007, 07:07 AM

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My son had a surge of OCD after the petfood recall started, following so soon after the Pnut butter scare, and got freaked about eating anything from a can, jar, package etc.....................

seems his concerns may not have just been OCD but a stark reality
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~KELLWANTSANSWERS~ · 05-03-2007, 11:45 AM

I feed my kitties purina and i worry EVERYDAY that it's gonna end up on that recall list as well!!
I also have serious worries about our food!!!
I am so sorry your son has had problems...I am kinda obsessed myself these days..
I hope he feels better soon!

dawn3063 · 05-04-2007, 07:53 PM

( I receive these news letters in my e-mail and thought it would be good to post. I don't feed my dogs their food. I feed prescription diet but I like to keep posted on the recent events.)

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May 4, 2007

Dear SmartPak Customer,

I am writing to inform you that on May 2nd, we initiated a voluntary recall of all orders of LiveSmart Adult Lamb and Brown Rice. This product tested positive for presence of melamine.

Previously, we had recalled another of our dog food brands, LiveSmart Weight Management Chicken and Brown Rice, which contained rice protein concentrate sourced from Wilbur Ellis. We were not able to determine if our product had been made with a contaminated batch without waiting many days for test results, so we voluntarily recalled the product the same day our contract manufacturer informed us of the potential for contamination to lessen the possibility of harm to dogs.

As part of our efforts to investigate this situation and prevent further issues, we immediately sent all the LiveSmart brand dog foods out for melamine testing.

Those tests came back on May 2nd, and the results surprised us. The LiveSmart Weight Management formulathe subject of our original recalldid not have any melamine detectable in the sample. Nor did LiveSmart Adult Chicken and Brown Rice, LiveSmart Puppy and Brown Rice, or LiveSmart Senior and Brown Rice, all of which tested negative for melamine. This is what we would have expected, since none of these products contain rice protein concentrate or wheat gluten.

But our Adult Lamb and Brown Rice formula did show presence of melamine. This was unexpected, since the product does not contain either of the suspect ingredients, nor any of the additional ingredients on the FDA watch list. All the meat and vegetable ingredients, with the exception of the lamb and lamb meal, originate from United States sources; none originate in China. The lamb and lamb meal we use in the formula is sourced from New Zealand, which has some of the strictest controls in the world, particularly surrounding use of antibiotics.

Once we received these test results, we immediately suspended production of SmartPaks containing LiveSmart Lamb. We pulled the product off the website. We notified UPS to redirect all packages destined for our customers homes. And we initiated this recall after discussing the situation with the FDA. Within hours, 99 percent of the roughly 220 pet owners feeding LiveSmart Lamb via SmartPaks were contacted by live phone contact or message, and/or email. We have had live contact with the majority of affected pet owners, and are continuing an aggressive outreach program to ensure that the notification has been received. To reduce likelihood of pet owners continuing to feed the food, replacement product is being shipped to affected customers free of charge.

It appears that our LiveSmart Lamb formula was produced shortly after another companys food that used contaminated rice protein concentrate, and that resulted in cross-contamination of our food. In addition to working with our contract manufacturer to identify steps that will reduce the possibility for cross contamination, we are testing all batches of finished products for the presence of melamine. We are also reformulating our LiveSmart Weight Management formula to eliminate the use of rice protein concentrate. Although in its pure form, rice protein concentrate is considered a high quality vegetable protein source, given the present situation, we feel that there are other options to ensure high protein levels that carry less risk.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at 1-800-461-8898. Our Product Specialists are available from 8:30am to 8pm EST Monday Thursday and 8:30am to 5:30pm EST Friday. Our Customer Service line is open 24/7.

We are all very upset to have exposed our customers and their dogs to this situation. We and other responsible members of the pet community will be working aggressively to implement additional testing and production safeguards to ensure that this does not happen again. I will continue to update our website as more information becomes available.

Sincerely,

Paal Gisholt
President and CEO

moose53 · 05-06-2007, 02:01 AM

This is really starting to make me sick:

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Barb

Justice · 05-07-2007, 11:49 AM

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FIRST I JUST WANT TO GIVE MY DEEPEST SYMPOTHIES TO ALL THOSE THAT LOST A LOVED ONE OR MORE TO THE RECALL SITUATION! I HAVE A PET MYSELF THAT I COULDN'T SEE LIVING WITHOUT,SO I'M TRULY SORRY TO ALL YOU OUT THERE.
NOW,DOES ANYONE KNOW IF THE RECALL IS OVER YET,IF THEY'VE GOTTEN ALL THE ITEMS PINNED DOWN,AND GONE,OR IF THEY'RE STILL FINDING MORE,AND ADDING MORE TO THE LIST! I ENDED UP TAKING MY PUPPY TO THE VET FOR A FULL EXAM,AND WORKUP TO MAKE SURE NOTHING WAS WRONG WITH HIM,BECAUSE HE WAS HAVING SOME WEIRD SYMPTOMS,VOMITING,HE WOULDN'T EAT,THE RUNS,IT SCARED THE HELL OUT OF ME! LUCKILY,HE WAS FINE! BUT I WAS STILL HAVING MY PANIC ATTACK OVER IT!

moose53 · 05-07-2007, 12:17 PM

Justice,

No. It's not over by a long shot. They're finding "secondary contamination" -- products that were run on the manufacturing lines after the initial contamination are also being contaminated.

Turns out that there appears to be significant fraud and manipulation involved by the original suppliers of the melamine-contaminated grain ... so there's no telling how far this goes back and how widespread it really is.

Apparently, they were putting the melamine in the grain because it mimics "additional protein" in the product.

Since this also seems to be affecting human food, I think it's going to DEMAND that better testing procedures be put in place.

The problem is it's impossible to test for everything. Especially when you throw liars and manipulators into the equation.

I would think that it should be possible to analyze say a pet food product and know what it should look like on a purely chemical analysis and then determine if it doesn't look like that. But, I'm probably being naive and too simplistic.

I have a problem, too, with a company that "manufactures" 95 different brands of cat food and dog food when, obviously, it's all the same brand, except for maybe some additional salt or spices or vitamins. I think that type of thinking -- that you can have one thing and say it's really 95 things -- is a significant part of what allowed this problem to happen.

Barb

Doody · 05-07-2007, 05:56 PM

PLUS a bunch of it went to feed some hogs in a couple of places. I believe California was one of them. Hogs that were going to market for people consumption. Idiots!!!!! Geesh!

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Babs · 05-08-2007, 08:56 AM

Hi Justice,

No it is not over yet. I signed up at

"
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"

and receive an e-mail alert in my mailbox as soon as something new comes up. They are real fast in alerting people.
I knew about the recall of "Natural Balance Venison and brown rice" even before the store who sells it. Actually I phoned them to take it off the shelves. They had to phone the company to make sure that I was right.

It helps knowing that you will be alerted about every new list there is.

Glad to hear that you pet is ok.
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Babs

Justice · 05-08-2007, 09:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doody
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PLUS a bunch of it went to feed some hogs in a couple of places. I believe California was one of them. Hogs that were going to market for people consumption. Idiots!!!!! Geesh!

.

So this could start contaminating human foods as well?....This is really getting out of control,I think the manufacturing companies should be looking at more than lawsuits,but criminal charges as well.I look at a persons pet as a member of thier family,just as if they were a human being! This is more criminal than just Oops! You know what I mean?!....I was just lucky that my little "Nico" was not harmed by this,and I still am afraid when I go to buy him new treats,and his food.They say they've pulled all items off the shelves that were recalled,but what about the one's they don't know about yet? You know! I just figure if I don't change what he's been eating for over 6 months,as his food,he'll be okay in that area.But I get pretty nervous picking out his treats,cause you never know,it feels like you're playing "Russion Roulette"! DAMN!
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