The story of the poisoned pet food has moved on to the blame stage:
The contaminated Chinese wheat gluten that led to the recall of pet food ended up only with manufacturers of food for animals, company officials said Tuesday.
The Chinese wheat gluten imported by ChemNutra Inc. went to companies that make pet foods, Stephen Miller, chief executive officer of the Las Vegas company, told The Associated Press.
Miller would not say which companies ChemNutra supplied.
The question of the contaminant seems to be settled:
Wheat gluten supplied by a company in Wangdien, China is suspected as a contaminated ingredient in pet food that is being blamed for the deaths of hundreds of cats and dogs. The finding led to the recall of nearly 100 brands of pet food in North America.
"This withdrawal removes all DLM Foods Canada Corp. pet products with wheat gluten procured from this manufacturing facility from retail shelves," said the company.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration reported last week that it had found melamine, a chemical used in plastics and some fertilizer, in samples of recalled pet food.
"Melamine is a substance not approved for use in food in the United States," said DLM Foods.
I don't think this is settled at all. As I've pointed out before, melamine is just not that toxic, though admittedly no one has done extensive testing on cats.
Melamine has been found in both the food itself and in cat urine. The urine is signficant, because metabolized melamine is a marker for other substance, such as the insecticide cyromazine. But even cyromazine is not toxic to mammals.
Even the FDA had noted that the melamine theory has major problems:
FDA was working to rule out the possibility that the contaminated wheat gluten could have made it into any human food. However, melamine is toxic only in high doses, experts said, leaving its role in the pet deaths unclear.
Does that mean that melamine is a dead end? Not necessarily. We already know about the aggressive (and irresponsible) application of pesticides by Chinese farmers.
What if the Chinese were applying a cocktail of substances directly on the wheat gluten? Detecting a relatively benign substance like melamine might be easy because of the high (though still safe) concentration of the substance. Other deadlier substances, such as the initial suspect, the rat poison aminopterin, are also present, but hidden. These other substances might have also broken down in the current batch of recalled food, now months old, leaving only the more stable and more persistant melamine behind.
Finally, we don't know if the presence of melamine with another poison is what did the animals in. Maybe it was a subtle interplay of chemicals rather than one specific substance.
Though the media has moved on, I'm not satisfied. I still harbour deep doubts that melamine was responsible. I do think that its presence might be signficant, though, but until Chinese authorities are more forthcoming, questions will linger.
