Only Luck Keeps Tainted Wheat Gluten Out of Human Food
Normally I would not cover human-centered news here but this is so closely related to the pet food problems I thought you would want to see this article from CBS News. Thanks to Anne, Spencer’s furmom, for barking it in!
Anne wrote:
Well, as people were trying to care for their sick pets and grieving over the ones that were lost, it looks now as though it was only a fluke that prevented this wheat gluten from being added to our own food. There’s something a bit chilling about having the Centers for Disease Control quietly monitoring the number of new patients admitted to the hospitals with renal failure.
I agree with you, Anne. And what is especially galling is all these weeks we have heard a constant repetition from every governmental and corporate official that there was no way any tainted foods, including wheat gluten, could have gotten in the food supplies. Now we have to ask if those saying those things are outright liars or so gullible themselves that they willingly mouthed the official lies?
How Close Was Tainted Wheat To Human Food?
CBS News Learns Nothing But Luck Kept Suspect Wheat Gluten Out Of Food Supply(CBS) The FDA announced today that not all of the tainted pet food has been pulled from store shelves. And at a congressional hearing, an entirely new concern was raised: How close did contaminated ingredients come to getting into food for humans?
CBS News has learned that the tainted wheat gluten used in pet food was human grade — meaning nothing but luck kept it from being used in the food people eat, too, CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports.
Wheat gluten is added to foods like bread, pasta and rice. While the public was focused on the danger to their pets, sources tell CBS News that the FDA had tracked at least one suspect batch of wheat gluten into the human food supply, quietly quarantined some products and notified the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention to watch for new patients admitted to hospitals with renal or kidney failure.
“We didn’t know at the time whether or not wheat gluten had made it into the human food supply,” said Dr. Stephen Sundlof, director of the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine. “We asked CDC to put a special emphasis on looking at increased incidents of renal failure in people.”
But there were no spikes in illnesses, and the human food ultimately tested clean. The FDA tried to comfort Congress today, saying there’s “no evidence” any bad gluten got into human food — thought the agency still doesn’t know where it all went.“What disturbs me about this incident is that it confirms yet again that pet food as well as human food is at risk,” said Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill.
Menu Foods, the food supplier that seems to have bought most of the problem ingredient, wouldn’t testify today. The lobby group that came in its place was left to explain why Menu supposedly knew that tests were making animals sick on Feb. 20 but didn’t tell the FDA until three weeks later.
“Let’s get the record straight: Menu waited more than three weeks after finding out that the dogs wouldn’t eat their food and were getting sick. They waited three weeks!” Durbin said.
“I don’t have the facts on Menu, senator,’ Duane Ekedahl of the Pet Food Institute testified.
“I think before you came to the hearing you would have the facts!” Durbin replied.
The FDA has gotten more than 19,000 phone calls, but today said it has “no good numbers” and that there’s no way to tell how many animals have gotten sick.
Follow this link to watch videos and see more information on the recall fiasco.
Wheat gluten is commonly used in some baby foods, not surprisingly as some of those “meals” have a gravy-like texture. I am relieved that my sister feeds my baby nephew home-cooked baby food, instead of that commercially-processed baby food in a glass container. How interesting…the dogs eat home-cooked, and so does the baby!! Any guesses on how soon we will be hearing about recalls on human foods containing wheat gluten? I of course hope not but it sounds plausible.
They’ve found a unique shaped crystal in the wheat gluten & sick animals urine but it hasn’t been identified yet? Why hasn’t there been more on this?
I read this last night on the howl 911 website it’s from a newspaper. I’m just doing the copy & paste thing; here It is:
By Karen Roebuck
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
The Chinese government and the company that supplied a contaminated ingredient are slowing the federal investigation into the nationwide recall of pet food, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration official said Tuesday.
Researchers, however, are making strides toward uncovering what has sickened cats and dogs nationwide. A lead scientist said yesterday he is convinced a second contaminant was in the wheat gluten, which FDA and independent researchers said was laced with high amounts of melamine, a chemical used in plastics.
Dr. Richard Goldstein, associate professor of medicine at Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine and a kidney specialist who is researching the outbreak’s health impact on pets, said he and other researchers saw what they believe is a second contaminant in the gluten and the urine of infected animals, but have yet to identify it. Cornell is among labs working with the FDA.
“The concerted effort now is to identify what else is in there, and what’s in the crystals” of infected animals’ urine and tissue, Goldstein said.
Michael Rogers, director of the FDA’s field investigations division, told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review the agency has asked the Chinese government for help investigating the gluten and the supplier, Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Co. Ltd., based in Jiangsu province.
The FDA is disappointed with slow and incomplete Chinese responses, Rogers said.
“I usually don’t speak in terms of cooperative or not cooperative,” he said.
Chu Maoming, spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington D.C., did not return calls or an e-mail requesting comment.
He told the Trib on March 30: “The Chinese Embassy is working closely with the FDA officers to determine the real cause.” Since then, he has declined repeated requests for interviews with the embassy representative working with the FDA.
Although the agency got some information from the Chinese, Rogers said, “There remain a number of questions.”
Federal investigators haven’t determined whether Xuzhou Anying shipped other food products to the United States, or what other Chinese companies it sold wheat gluten to that, in turn, might have been shipped here, Rogers said.
Xuzhou Anying’s Web site said it also exports carrots, garlic, ginger, corn protein powder, vegetables and feed. Rogers said Chinese officials have not responded to the U.S. government’s question about whether any products other than wheat gluten were shipped here.
“We’re certainly reviewing all products from this source,” he said. Since the recall, the company has shipped only wheat gluten to the United States, but U.S. officials still are unsure what might have been shipped prior to the recall, Rogers said.
“From an operational standpoint, we still have questions about this company,” he said.
The FDA is screening all wheat gluten imported from China and the Netherlands at U.S. ports and seizing all wheat gluten from Xuzhou Anying.
Under the microscope and even to the naked eye, the contaminated gluten looks different from uncontaminated samples, Goldstein said. Researchers see melamine granules and other colored granules throughout the gluten, he said.
“There appears to be other things in there, other than the melamine, but identifying what they are is a long process,” he said.
He said researchers ruled out aminopterin — used as rat poison in other countries — which New York state officials previously announced was in the pet food.
The FDA, Cornell and other researchers found melamine in high concentrations in the gluten — up to 6.6 percent of the product.
Even so, they do not believe the melamine made the animals sick, although they said it is a marker for tracking the outbreak, because the crystal found in the melamine and in animals’ urine and tissue is distinctive to this outbreak.
Because of a dearth of past studies on melamine exposure in dogs and cats, the only way to know for sure if it could cause the outbreak would be to feed the compound to those animals, Goldstein said, adding, “That’s not an option.”
More than 10 laboratories are researching the crystals and working together to develop criteria to determine which kidney illnesses were caused by the contaminated pet food. Although the link is relatively easy to establish because of the distinctive crystals, the process needed to find them is expensive and time-consuming, Goldstein said.
The labs will test urine and tissue samples from pets suspected of becoming ill from the food and possibly samples of the food, he said. How that will be accomplished and who will pay for it has not been determined, so pet owners and veterinarians are advised to keep those samples, he said. The labs are trying to develop a way to test for melamine more quickly and cheaply.