Food Chain in Crisis?

Posted by Richard Blair at 8:03 PM on May 2, 2007.

It's impossible not to be concerned about the exploding story of deadly pet food, and way more importantly, the now confirmed entry of the problem into our own food chain.

CNN is reporting this evening that as many as 2.5 million people may have recently eaten chickens that were fed with contaminated feed. And the more I read about the melamine tainted wheat gluten issue, the more I'm realizing that the FDA is dealing with the potential enormity of this disaster about as effectively as FEMA dealt with Katrina.

Here's CNN's lede:

People have eaten millions of chickens that were given feed tainted with recalled pet food, federal officials said Tuesday, though they said the threat to human health is minimal.

The announcement came after an investigation of chicken farms in Indiana found that 38 of the facilities had given contaminated feed to poultry raised for human consumption, and that 2.5 million to 3 million people ate them.

The officials added that they expect to discover that chickens on possibly hundreds of farms in other states were also given tainted feed...

Additionally, the article goes on to report that potentially contaminated pork has been sold in some areas of the U.S. The upshot? Basically, any grain fed livestock, free-range or not, is potentially at risk. The FDA's response? In essence, it would appear that they're doing little more than damage control for the Chinese government, and engaging in an ass-covering exercise for the U.S. companies involved...

As of last week, more than 4,000 cats and dogs have died from contaminated pet food, most as a result of renal system failure due to melamine crystal buildup. It's only natural to assume that if wheat gluten, rice gluten, rice protein, rice protein concentrate, corn gluten, corn gluten meal, corn byproducts, soy protein, soy gluten proteins and mung bean protein made it into pet food and livestock feed, that the same products have been used to manufacture grain-based people food (as well as the potential of secondary transmission via meats produced from animals fed with these products).

Perhaps most importantly, aren't the deaths of 4,000 pets a "canary in the mine" of our own food chain?

Fortunately, the FDA's got a response: send a couple of inspectors over to China to figure out the magnitude of the problem, and do some major PR to downplay the significance of the problem:

In a teleconference with reporters, an official with the Food and Drug Administration said no recall has been issued because "the likelihood of illness after eating chicken fed the contaminated product is very low."

...Two FDA investigators are in China and a third was en route working with the Chinese government's General Administration for Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine to investigate the sources of the contaminated products...

The FDA has known about this since at least the early part of March, for chrissakes. To me, this response is like sending Michael Brown for a flyover of the Gulf Coast two days after Katrina. And even now, they can't positively answer the question of whether or not these products were used to make human food. The entire transcript of the FDA news conference that is the basis of CNN's report can be found here, but here's a rather lengthy exchange that's worth mulling over:

REPORTER: Hi. Regarding the April 27 import alert, it said that about 750 samples of wheat gluten and products were tested, and 330 were positive for melamine-related compounds. Are those all pet food samples? And have any human food samples in the surveillance to date, I mean even a single one, tested positive? And also, it seems contradictory to say that you have to put down the pigs because they are not safe enough to be slaughtered now and go into the market, but yet it's safe enough not to recall the ones that have already been slaughtered.

MODERATOR: Let's start with Michael Rogers and then maybe we could go to Dr. Sundloff.

MR. ROGERS: I'll comment on the first part of the question. I'm not going to get into the specific numbers. Certainly when this import alert was published those potentially represented the numbers at the time, but this is an ongoing investigation, and we continue to analyze samples and receive additional data that would alter the positives and negatives. Having said that, the import alert, which is detention without physical exam, is a proactive opportunity by the agency to take a look at these vegetable protein products. But it's certainly important to reference that all of the positive samples for rice protein concentrate and wheat gluten have been associated to two primary sources in China.

REPORTER: But were they all pet food, or were any of them in human food?

MR. ROGERS: There is no evidence to suggest that any of the bulk products went to human food manufacturers.

MODERATOR: Thank you. Dr. Petersen, would you like to take the second part of that question?

DR. PETERSEN: Yes. Thank you. On Thursday's call, we mentioned, when we look at the feed and FDA made a determination that the feed -- where they knew had been mixed with a contaminated pet food -- was the feed that was found to be adulterated. And so that's in this case a legal term. It wasn't specifically related to – well it was a legal term. Then our burden, when those animals, pigs in this case, come to slaughter, is: can we find them not adulterated? And when we know they've eaten feed that FDA found adulterated, we're not able to put the mark of inspection on those animals. So it is, in this case it's the appropriate decision. It's a legal interpretation for us to be able to apply the mark of inspections for animals that come to market.

Then those that are already in commerce as we walk through on this call, that they are just no health issues as best either agency, particularly FDA, can determine. So it's a legal issue regarding the live animals. We think it's a prudent decision to prevent further possible entry into commerce, and we're legally obligated to do that because of the decisions made on the feed, and then on anything that may be in commerce, given the health issues and the lack of that we discussed, that we don't think any further action is appropriate...

Get it? They're killing the live animals that are contaminated, but they won't issue a recall for those link sausages or chicken breasts that you've had in your freezer for the past month. And, nearly two months into this thing, they still can't (or won't) say if the melamine-laced protein enhancers made it into a human food manufacturing process. That's patently bullshit - or should be. I've worked in the bulk raw materials industry, and I can tell you with a certainty that they should know every movement of these products through first, second, and probably third level distributors by shipment and lot number. Armed with that information, it doesn't take a lot of CSI work to find out what food manufacturers may have used the products in human food production.

I'm not smart enough to know what the overall response should be at this point, but I do know that if this is how the Bush regime's federal agencies would deal with a terrorist-inspired spiking of our food chain, we're in some deep, deep trouble. This is sounding a lot like the Mayor of Amity telling the tourists that there are no problems - go ahead and take a swim and don't worry about that shark fin out in the bay...

Lastly, I would be remiss not to point to this excellent discussion - from March 30th - at the Pet Connection Blog. Here's a snip:

In an FDA press conference this morning, a reporter asked the FDA’s Dr. Stephen Sundlof if people could be feeding unsafe food to their pets right now, because the FDA won’t reveal the name of a company - that makes dry “kibbled” food as well as “wet” pet food - that received wheat gluten from the same source Menu did.

The response? “It is possible, but I think we’ve been following every lead that we can. My sense is that we have gotten most of it under control.” ...

March 30th. And recalls of contaminated pet foods have been issued almost daily since that time. I'd hardly call that "under control". As many of the commenters noted, why hasn't the Center for Disease Control been called into action yet? At least they have response teams and protocols for dealing with this kind of thing in humans.

Bon appétit...

Tagged as: fda, food chain, pet food recall

Richard Blair is a Philadelphia-based freelance writer, and the blogmaster of All Spin Zone.