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Millions Of Chickens Fed Tainted Pet Food
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/01/AR2007050102071.html
Risk to Consumers Minimal, FDA Says
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 2, 2007; Page A01
At least 2.5 million broiler chickens from an Indiana producer were fed pet
food scraps contaminated with the chemical melamine and subsequently sold for
human consumption, federal health officials reported yesterday.
Hundreds of other producers may have similarly sold an unknown amount of
contaminated poultry in recent months, they added, painting a picture of much
broader consumption of contaminated feed and food than had previously been
acknowledged in the widening pet food scandal.
Pet Food Claims Animal Lives
A widespread contamination of pet food has been linked to the deaths of
several dogs and cats and thousands of reports of sick animals throughout the
country.
Officials emphasized that they do not believe the tainted chickens -- or the
smaller number of contaminated pigs that were reported to have entered the
human food supply -- pose risks to people who ate them.
"We do not believe there is any significant threat of human illness from
this," said David Acheson, the Food and Drug Administration's chief medical
officer. FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach named Acheson yesterday the
agency's new "food czar" -- officially, assistant commissioner for food
protection.
None of the farm animals is known to have become sick from the food, and very
little of the contaminant is suspected of having accumulated in their tissue.
Thus, no recall of any products that may still be on store shelves or in
people's freezers is planned, officials said.
Nonetheless, 100,000 Indiana chickens that ate the melamine-laced food and
are still alive have been quarantined and will be destroyed as a precautionary
measure -- as will any other animals that turn up as the investigation
continues to expand.
The revelations are the latest in a rapidly widening scandal that started out
with reports of a few deaths of pets. It has mushroomed into a major debacle
that, even if no human injuries emerge, has exposed significant gaps in the
nation's food-safety system.
In the first volley of what Hill watchers expect to be a series of proposed
fixes, Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.)
yesterday introduced legislation that would give the FDA the power to order
mandatory recalls of adulterated foods, establish an early warning and
notification system for tainted human or pet food, and allow fines for
companies that do not promptly report contaminated products.
Meanwhile, the FDA expanded the number of plant-based protein products from
China on its "do not import" list, pending the completion of further tests on
various kinds of glutens, protein concentrates and other products.
At the center of the problem are pet foods spiked with melamine, a mildly
toxic chemical that can make food appear to have more protein than it does.
Most of the food went to pets, but scraps were sold in February to the Indiana
poultry producer, officials said. The contaminated material may have made up
about 5 percent of the chickens' total food supply.
That small fraction, and the fact that people, unlike pets, do not eat the
same thing day after day, suggests that consumers who ate contaminated pork or
chicken would probably have ingested extremely small doses of melamine, well
below the threshold for causing health effects, officials said. Experts
conceded, however, that they know little about how the toxin interacts with
other compounds in food.
Investigators are tracking streams of the contaminated food through several
states.
"Our sense is that the investigation will lead to additional farms where
contaminated feed may have been fed to either animals or poultry," said Kenneth
Petersen of the Agriculture Department Food Safety and Inspection Service.
Officials said the FDA has received 17,000 reports of pets that owners
believe were sickened or killed by contaminated food. About 8,000 reports,
roughly half of them involving animals that died, have been formally entered
into the FDA's tracking system for further analysis.
U.S. investigators have arrived in China, officials said, but inspections of
production facilities there have been hampered by the start yesterday of a
week-long national vacation.
"Essentially, all the officials are on holiday," said Walter Batts, part of
the FDA's China team, adding that one Chinese official had stayed behind to
help.
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