Filler in Animal Feed Is Open Secret in China

[ewmayer]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/bu...ss/30food.html

This stuff has also made its way into the human food chain, by way of widepsread use in animal feed:

"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.

...

The pet food case is also putting China’s agricultural exports under greater scrutiny because the country has had a terrible food safety record.

In recent years, for instance, China’s food safety scandals have involved everything from fake baby milk formulas and soy sauce made from human hair to instances where cuttlefish were soaked in calligraphy ink to improve their color and eels were fed contraceptive pills to make them grow long and slim."

[ewmayer]

Related article in today's New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/30/wo...eath for Graft

Sign of real change on the way, or simply "taking one for the team"?

I work with quite a few Chinese folks -- apparently the underlying issue in China is that the rules/laws on the books and enforcement thereof tend to be orthogonal, unless the government chooses to take a particular interest in a matter, often largely as a result of public embarassment, as in the present instance. (And of course their food and drug exports are suffering badly, so there's a material incentive, as well).