Outside the Beltway

Update on the Pet Food Recall

Dave Schuler · Monday, April 30, 2007 · 1 comment

The New York Times is reporting this morning that adulterating vegetable protein with melamine is a common practice in China:

ZHANGQIU, China, April 28 — As American food safety regulators head to China to investigate how a chemical made from coal found its way into pet food that killed dogs and cats in the United States, workers in this heavily polluted northern city openly admit that the substance is routinely added to animal feed as a fake protein.

For years, producers of animal feed all over China have secretly supplemented their feed with the substance, called melamine, a cheap additive that looks like protein in tests, even though it does not provide any nutritional benefits, according to melamine scrap traders and agricultural workers here.

For more news and commentary on the ongoing pet food recall scandal check my report at The Glittering Eye.