PressWatch

"Filler in Animal Feed Is Open Secret in China" has some distressing news for pet owners. The product that has been killing American pets, illegal as a food additive in the U.S., is widely used as filler in animal food that is sold to the U.S. from China.

“Many companies buy melamine scrap to make animal feed, such as fish feed,� said Ji Denghui, general manager of the Fujian Sanming Dinghui Chemical Company, which sells melamine. “I don’t know if there’s a regulation on it. Probably not. No law or regulation says ‘don’t do it,’ so everyone’s doing it. The laws in China are like that, aren’t they? If there’s no accident, there won’t be any regulation.�

Also distressing (but not surprising to me) is this statement, considering the huge volume of products coming from China:

“They have fewer people inspecting product at the ports than ever before,� says Caroline Smith DeWaal, the director of food safety for the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington. “Until China gets programs in place to verify the safety of their products, they need to be inspected by U.S. inspectors. This open-door policy on food ingredients is an open invitation for an attack on the food supply, either intentional or unintentional.�

It was probably a challenge for these two reporters to get all the sources they did. Is one of them stationed in China?

Last Friday here in Zhangqiu, a fast-growing industrial city southeast of Beijing, two animal feed producers explained in great detail how they purchase low-grade wheat, corn, soybean or other proteins and then mix in small portions of nitrogen-rich melamine scrap, whose chemical properties help the feed register an inflated protein level.

They have done some good research on a timely subject and gotten it out to the public quickly.

Another article found at MSNBC.com from the Puget Sound Business Journal localizes the issue to that area of the country(western Washington State). "Pet deaths scare owners to premium, local food" tells the story of how sales of locally produced food have jumped recently after the pet food scare.

Sales at the seven All the Best Pet Care stores in Seattle and on the Eastside have gone up by 5 percent in the past month, said owner Susan Moss.

"A lot of our staff are saying they're seeing people coming in they've never seen before," Moss said.

And price isn't a sticking point: "Darwin's said it typically attracts about 20 new customers a month. It recently drew 80 new clients willing to pay a premium for Darwin's product."

A good job of localizing a national (even international) issue that probably effects most Americans. Also a good humanizing quote to end an otherwise numbers-oriented article:

While pet-food stores and suppliers are encouraged that more consumers are seeking out healthy food, they also aren't celebrating the recall.

"I don't take much pleasure in business growing because people are losing their family members," Lybrand said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/business/worldbusiness/30food.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18390870/