Bon appetit
Fears grow on pet food - sacbee.com
New findings expand the threat beyond wheat gluten.By Carrie Peyton Dahlberg - Bee Staff Writer
Published 12:00 am PDT Wednesday, April 18, 2007
The monthlong pet food recall expanded Tuesday with a troubling twist, for the first time involving foods that do not contain wheat gluten but still tested positive for a potentially lethal chemical.
The finding makes it much tougher to tell people what to safely feed their pets and fuels suspicions that the chemical melamine is being deliberately added to some pet food ingredients to bolster apparent protein.
Natural Balance, a Pacoima-based company, is "99.9 percent sure" that a rice protein made in Asia is responsible for the melamine detected Tuesday in some of its venison-based pet foods, company President Joey Herrick said.
"It was pretty shocking," he said in a phone interview after the company recalled several of its venison foods. "I was livid."
Herrick declined to name the supplier of the rice protein or the country it came from, saying only that a large American company acquired the ingredient for Diamond Pet Foods, which makes some Natural Balance products.
Because both wheat gluten and rice protein enhance the protein content of pet food, "it certainly is suspicious" that melamine now is associated with both, said Bob Poppenga, a UC Davis veterinary toxicology professor.
Melamine isn't an edible protein, but it has plenty of nitrogen, which can be used as a marker for protein in chemical analyses.
So, if someone wanted to use less of the relatively pricey sources of vegetable protein, such as wheat gluten, and throw in cheaper starches instead, adding melamine to that mix would still make it look like a protein-rich product, numerous veterinary nutritionists and toxicologists have said.
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But, of course, "someone" would draw the line at doing this with "human-grade" wheat gluten and rice protein? The US imports 80% of the wheat gluten it uses in animal and human food, and the FDA inspects less than 1% of food imports.