Posted on 04/27/2007 6:50:19 PM PDT by mom4kittys
WASHINGTON - Federal agents searched facilities of a dog and cat food manufacturer and one of its suppliers as part of an investigation into the widening recall of pet products, the companies disclosed Friday.
Food and Drug Administration officials searched an Emporia, Kan., pet food plant operated by Menu Foods and the Las Vegas offices of ChemNutra Inc., according to the companies.
Menu Foods made many of the more than 100 brands of pet food recalled since March 16 because of contamination by the chemical melamine. ChemNutra supplied the manufacturer with wheat gluten, one of the two ingredients tainted by melamine used in recalled pet products. Both companies said they were cooperating with the investigation.
Menu Foods also said the U.S. Attorney's offices in Kansas and the western district of Missouri have targeted the company as part of misdemeanor investigations into whether it violated the federal Food, Drug & Cosmetic Act. The sale of adulterated food is a misdemeanor.
The FDA also is looking at all other ingredients imported by ChemNutra, and trying to reconcile what it imported with what it supplied to customers, said agency spokeswoman Julie Zawisza.
Import records obtained by The Associated Press show that since May 2006 alone ChemNutra also imported 440,000 pounds of the second suspect pet food ingredient, rice protein concentrate, from the same Chinese trading agent that handled exports of the tainted wheat gluten.
It's unknown if ChemNutra's rice protein concentrate was contaminated. Limited testing suggests it wasn't. However, another company's imports of that same ingredient, albeit from a different source, have been found to be tainted.
Ten of the 11 containers of rice protein concentrate imported by ChemNutra over the last year went to undisclosed pet food companies, spokesman Steve Stern said. The 11th is under quarantine and being tested. But just one of the other 10 is known to have been tested; results from those tests, done last week, showed it was not contaminated, Stern said.
The origin within China of the wheat gluten and rice protein concentrate remains murky. For example, ChemNutra's source for the two vegetable proteins, Suzhou Textile Import and Export Co., told The AP that food ingredients aren't part of its business — but that employees often take on side deals. Stern said ChemNutra dealt with the company's president.
The FDA has blocked wheat gluten imports from a second Chinese company, Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Co. That company has told AP it bought the ingredient from other undisclosed firms and then sold it to Suzhou Textile.
Meanwhile, rice protein concentrate imported by the second company, Wilbur-Ellis Co., has tested positive for melamine. It came from a different Chinese source, Futian Biology Technology Co. Ltd.
Last week, the FDA blocked rice protein concentrates from that source. And on Friday, American Nutrition Inc. became the final of five pet food companies that Wilbur-Ellis supplied with the tainted ingredient to recall a variety of products.
An unknown number of dogs and cats have been sickened or died after eating chemical-laced pet food.
Menu Foods said it faces more than 50 lawsuits. It in turn has sued ChemNutra.
___
Associated Press writer Christopher Bodeen in Shanghai, China, contributed to this report.
On the Net:
Food and Drug Administration on pet food recall: http://tinyurl.com/2bjasu
BUMP, woof and meow. (bookmark too)
TANKS for the ping MOM...This money-makin’/GREED BS is
what got US into this mess,,,
ALL : Wanna spend TAXPAYERS $$$$$$$$$$ to test food or
GROW FOOD ????? DUH !!
To Hell With Klintoon-Free-Trade !!!
Well said.
I’ve been busy, but am interested in this story. Thanks for the pings.
“The chinese will also do things as cheaply as possible and have no conscience for the standards of product they put out. We just buy it hook line and sinker.”
The Chinese, like the Mexicans, are just desperately poor people happy to make a living selling what they can to Americans. They’re not really the problem here.
No. The problem is people like me, and people like you. You see, people like me maximize profit. I make a lot of money. I make a lot MORE money if there are a lot of deals and they are lucrative. I don’t particularly care what sides are involved or who or where. So long as I get paid, I am completely indifferent. Change the laws in ways that will cut into MY money stream, and I will use my highly educated brain to make very sincere and logical arguments as to why it is a terrible thing to damage the economy by fettering it with unworkable regulations, by taxing capital gains and reducing the incentive to invest, by imposing trade barriers. I will use my knowledge of history to invoked names like Smoot Hawley Tarrifs! And I will say that they caused the Great Depression, and you don’t want another one of THOSE, do you? A Great Depression? Anything that is going to cut into maximizing my profit and my bonus every year I am going to complain about as contrary to capitalism. So, I am greedy, because I want to be secure and independent, and that takes great gobs of money, at least if you live anywhere around New York. You can never have enough money, and anything that stands in the way of me and my ilk earning money I will very intelligently characterize as being evil, bad for America, bad for Americans, etc. I will do it with soul and conviction too, because certainly anything that cuts into the business is bad for ME.
You are part of the problem because you believe people like me. Your common sense tells you that there being no appreciable increase in the price your mom can sell grain for a decade, while the price of cereal has gone through the roof, is indicative of something wrong. But then we’ll trot out the icons: REAGAN believed in free trade, and we had the best economy in the history of the universe under Reagan. Surely you’re not against REAGAN? And you’ll say, “Oh, gee, I didn’t know...” and fall silent. If you ask again, we’ll tell you that the economy NOW has never been better. We’ll cite to statistics (which, remember, we prepare, and we understand statistics. I recall a lawsuit in which one side, entirely believably, mathematically proved to the jury, with meticulous facts and mathematical formulae, that the defendant company owed one billion dollars in damages. And in which the other side, equally meticulously, proved with indisputable facts and formulae, that really their client was only liable for maybe $2 million.) Math doesn’t lie! We’ll say that unemployment is low (feel secure in YOUR job?), that health care would be WAY too expensive to cover everybody. And you’ll say “Oh, gee...” and defer.
And if you pop your head up again and say “But, but...” we will call you a socialist, and maybe even French, and we will point out how socialists really are communists, and communists hate Jesus. And thirty five other folks will jump on your head for being un-American.
And that is why you pay a greater percentage of your income in taxes than I do every year, and always will. Because it’s best for America that way.
I am part of the problem because I am evil.
You are the other half of the problem because you listen and follow the evil arguments that men like me tell you all the time, and you vote for people who represent our interests, but not yours. Your common sense tells you that Free Trade with China is destroying America.
And you are basically right.
But I have a great apartment in Paris, so I am not going to support anything that gets in the way of ME making as much money as possible on free trade in China. Your mom just has to lose. ‘Cause free trade is best. And you keep voting for the folks who give it to you.
It’s a symbiotic relationship.
Ross Perot was right about the jobs and the “giant sucking sound”. You made fun of him, didn’t you? I did. If he had won and implemented his plans, why, I would have to pay the folks who cut my lawn DOUBLE what I pay them now! And why would you want me to have to do that?
GREED—it’s what’s for dinner!
“And in other news:”
My wife and myself have been involved in the shipping industry for many a year, over 35 actually, and it has been our observation that the absolute “Primo” quality agricultural products are what are shipped to overseas markets. We cannot find the quality we have seen shipped overseas in any of the Supermarkets, or Specialty Markets.
One has to be, or know a grower to have high quality. Don’t get me wrong, the produce etc. is good, just not the highest grade on the scale.
I am in AWE over your brilliance!!! Speechless in fact! I need to go soak all that in. Excuse me while I go check my door, I’m hearing a giant sucking sound outside.
So in other words, food is imported from China on price, but few people know exactly what and how much is imported. Again, the information is out there but people (and reporters) are lazy.
bump.
From the article you linked.
Damn. I suppose it could be in national brand pork or bacon. It's good that the FDA is finally chasing this stuff down. Better late than never.
If you ever come-across a good source for Northern Spay apples, let me know.
Spay = Spy
Become an educated consumer and insist on healthy, safe food products. Make intelligent choices and tell the big agra companies to sell their crap to China.
The correct answer, speaking from the perspective of long-term American national security, mind you, and not the long-term economic wealth and power of the international business class, is that America should not import ANY food from China, or anything else, for that matter, that cannot be made here or made in a democratic, free country.
People should not be paying $1 for a pair of socks, because the price of that $1 is a whole lot more than a dollar! There’s the unemployment and Medicaid benefits for the textile workers who can’t make the sock in America anymore, because people won’t pay $5 for the socks if they can get it for $1. And yeah, the cost of benefits to those other Americans, and prisons for the ones who go nuts (because idle hands are the Devil’s workshop), cost you a lot more than that $4 difference. But the externality is invisible, and we all think we’re getting a great deal buying those Chinese products.
Now our pets are dead because we bought crappy Chinese food, in a country with the world’s largest breadbasket, mind you. But it was cheaper!
We import over $200 billion in foodstuffs from China, annually....absolutely nuts!
What missing is the patriotism towards America. International companies show allegiance to the dollar only.
Your friend in Switzerland is indicative of why Europe won’t import American meat, and won’t allow genetically modified crops to be grown. They think those things are dangerous. Europeans will tell you point blank that Americans are fat because of the hormones that make American cows enormous are in the meat, and Americans eat the meat, and so Americans become enormous because of the hormones. They believe it. They do not want any food treated with hormones. Likewise, they do not want anything to do with crops that have been genetically modified.
That’s what the European people want, in their market, for their consumption.
Of course, therefore, the United States has seized the World Trade Organization citing Europe’s violation of free trade. Europe is a huge market, and those Europeans are going to buy our hormone treated meat and our Frankenstein wheat, dammit. Who the hell do they think they are excluding our products, which we make WAY cheaper than theirs are (because they don’t use hormones or GMOs, and therefore don’t have the yields). How DARE those, those SOCIALISTS use national sovereignty as the basis to erect laws that make it ILLEGAL for us to sell our meat and our wheat in their market! We have the lowest price, therefore we have the RIGHT, by virtue of our superior production methods, to put the European farmers out of business because our products are cheaper. HOW DARE those Europeans use their LAWS to completely block us from competing in their markets! Socialist bastards! We need the WTO to batter down those doors and force the Europeans to buy our economically superior hormone meat and Frankenstein wheat. It is our divine right, being the lowest price producer, to own all the markets we can reach. National sovereignty cannot be allowed to stand in the way of superior economic organization!
“the rich wall street crowd can eat anything they want,,,they do not care,,,it’s all about the
$$$$$$$$$$$$$!!!”
Yeah, but you still made fun of Ross Perot, didn’t you?
Is the same Chinese company that supplies vitamins for baby formula?
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