Filler in Animal Feed Is Open Secret in China

Since it joined the WTO in 2001, China has come under increasing pressure to crack down on manufacturing of counterfeit and illegal goods within its borders. Beyond intellectual property concerns, safety fears are becoming increasingly prominent amid criticism of China’s lax enforcement against counterfeiters. Tales of fake medicines on US shelves and faithful replications of name-brand cars on its roads, for example, have sparked a concern that Chinese counterfeits have infiltrated the global supply chain, with potentially dangerous consequences. Attention has focused most recently on tainted pet food, which has prompted thousands of other complaints, according to latest updates from the US Food and Drug Administration. The culprit chemical, it seems, is melamine, a substance derived from coal that resembles protein, but contains little nutritional value. Reporting from factories in Zhangqiu, reporters with “The New York Times” have discovered that the use of melamine, which costs less than a quarter of what protein does, as filler in animal food, is widespread and unregulated. Far from harmless, as the recent pet deaths show, melamine has probably also made its way into animal feed, another common export from Chinese factories to the US. The frightening possibility that the tainted feed might contaminate the human food supply led to the slaughter of pigs in California, and is likely to prompt further investigation. As the “New York Times” report shows, factory managers have thus far faced no pressure to do anything but produce at the lowest possible cost. Now that the US is taking a closer look at their practices, however, pressure from the Chinese government, eager to avoid scandal and interruption of trade, may be forthcoming. – YaleGlobal