Angry in the Great White North

See all the posts related to the pet food recall.

In further background checking on the possible cause of the dog and cat poisonings that have been tracked to Menu Foods products, that is, the presence of a rodenticide aminopterin in lethal concentrations contaminating wheat gluten imported from China, I've been coming across all sorts of interesting information on how cavalier the Chinese are when it comes to deadly compounds.

First, the Chinese have noted just how irresponsible they are in appying rodenticides to the food supply to control rodents.

But this sort of thing has been going on for a long time. In 2002, a young girl in New York City suffered permanent debilitating injuries when she injested a rat poison. The poison in question, tetramethylenedisulfotetramine or TETS, is illegal for use in the United States. For any reason whatsoever. In fact it is so nasty that scientists don't really know what it can do:

TETS meets criteria for inclusion in the list of extremely hazardous pesticides maintained by the World Health Organization (WHO) and is more lethal than WHO's most toxic registered pesticide, sodium fluoroacetate. Multiple large intentional and unintentional exposures in China have demonstrated the human toxicity of TETS. The dose at which TETS kills 50% of mammals (LD50) is 0.1--0.3 mg/kg; a dose of 7.0--10.0 mg is considered lethal in humans. TETS is potentially 100 times more toxic to humans than potassium cyanide and might be a more powerful human convulsant than strychnine.

And yet the girl was exposed because Chinese authorities allowed this poison to be used in poorly labelled products, and worse yet, to be exported, probably to be sold in local shops in Chinatown next to pirated DVDs:

On May 15, 2002, a previously healthy female infant aged 15 months living with her family in New York City was found by her parents to be playing with a white rodenticide powder that they had brought from China and applied in the corner of their kitchen. After 15 minutes, the child had generalized seizures and was taken to an emergency department. Her initial blood glucose level was 108 mg/dL (normal range: 80--120 mg/dL). Despite aggressive therapy with lorazepam, phenobarbital, and pyridoxine, she had intermittent generalized seizure activity for 4 hours and required intubation.

After 3 days, the infant was extubated successfully but appeared to have multiple neurologic deficits, including absence seizures and possibly cortical blindness. Continuous electroencephalogram monitoring, performed during the initial hospitalization, revealed multiple epileptogenic foci. The infant was discharged in June; as of November 5, the infant remained severely developmentally delayed and was on valproic acid therapy for seizure control.

Translation of the rodenticide package labeling from Chinese to English did not clarify its contents. A search of the China National Poison Control Center's (NPCC) web-site for rodenticides suggested that the ingredients might have included sodium monofluoroacetate, fluoroacetamide, tetramethylenedinitrosotetramine, or strychnine. However, an initial laboratory analysis was negative for sodium fluoroacetate, fluoroacetamide, bromethalin, strychnine, 1,3-difluoro, 2-propanol, and carbamate insecticides.

This is what passes for labelling in China:

Compare to what we use here:

Given this attitude towards managing dangerous substances, the focus on profits, and the lack of oversight, it might be that Chinese authorities might have trouble figuring out what just what was being used as a rat poison.

Makes you wonder about just how safe any food import is from China.

Funny, isn't it. One cow in Alberta is diagnosed with Mad Cow, a disease that still puzzles scientists as to the cause and how it is spread, and the entire industry shuts down as no one is willing to import as much as a hamburger patty from Canada. And the only reason the case was discovered was because Canada has robust inspection system managed by people who put the public good over the financial interests of any sector of the economy. I wonder what the reaction will be if it is conclusively determined that this Chinese wheat shipment was poisoned by the deliberate act of officials spraying some kind of mystery rat poison directly on the food.

Ferdy the Cat explains this in terms of mercantilism.