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Fish Fed Melamine-Tainted Feed, Rice Protein Actually Wheat Flour
UPDATE: Here’s a picture of the mis-labeled bag imported through ChemNutra that containted the melamine-tainted wheat flour.

(Correction: Wheat flour spiked with melamine was sold as wheat gluten and rice protein concentrate)

May 8th FDA press conference on melamine investigation update. We have posted the major points below.

Fish feed contaminated: Contaminated feed went into fish feed in Canada, sold to US fish farms. Investigators have only been to one farm and no fish has entered the market yet. Learned in the last week (about 2 months after the first recall) that contaminated fish feed ingredient was brokered through ChemNutra — the same company that supplied Menu Foods. Fish meal constitutes less than 50% of fish food.

Pet food quality control failed to detect problems: Wheat flour added instead of rice protein concentrate or wheat gluten. Pet food companies are responsible for testing for correct ingredients.

Contaminated shipments actually wheat flour: Not labeled wheat flour. Wheat gluten and wheat flour are related. Pet food with contaminated rice protein concentrate actually contained wheat flour.

Affects on farm animals not yet conclusive: Animal exposure risk assessment not yet complete. May take a week. Although the FDA is saying that the exposure to the animals was brief and the concentration is low and even if you take an extreme position of exposure, the risk is 2500 times below any known possible risk.

FDA in reactive mode: FDA is currently focused on testing new imports of wheat gluten and rice protein concentrate, not other possible suspects. FDA will look at other ingredients if they start to see unusual spikes of unexplained illnesses.

The process of making wheat gluten: FDA comments: Wheat gluten is a component of wheat flour. It uses a process where you wash the starch away and then you’re left with the wheat gluten (the protein). This is when we are speculative — it certainly is a simpler process of a manufacturer where they take wheat flour or whole wheat and grind it up and then it would still have some wheat gluten in it. The total protein content of that is low. If you add melamine, you are adding nitrogen to it and when you do that, the measure of protein is actually measuring nitrogen. You have a wheat based product with high protein and then that creates the appearance of high protein when it actually is high nitrogen.