China probing wheat gluten tied to pet deaths

Few food imports inspected
Marion Nestle, a nutrition professor at New York University, said importing the ingredients for food products from developing countries is becoming “increasingly common.”

“This is what globalization is about,” said Nestle, who is writing a book about pet food.

While regulators recognize that more and more food is reaching the U.S. from developing countries, Nestle said the Food and Drug Administration is not equipped to sufficiently monitor its quality.

“The FDA is an agency under siege,” she said, lacking the funding and manpower to adequately screen imported food, though they are slowly being “reluctantly dragged into it, kicking and screaming.”

An FDA spokeswoman, Vash Klein, said the agency did not have time to comment on Friday.

Nestle said that she has always wondered why imported vegetables from Mexico, for example, don’t make Americans sick when American tourists traveling in Mexico often get sick from vegetables they eat there. Experts have told her, she said, that Mexican vegetables slated for export to the U.S. are “produced under conditions that are identical to conditions in the U.S.”

“But if you think about it for a second, you realize that the FDA isn’t going off into the wild to inspect everything,” Nestle said, noting that the agency is able to inspect only 2 percent of the goods that cross U.S. borders.

Neal Hooker, a professor of agricultural economics at Ohio State University, said that while the FDA cannot inspect every good that comes into the U.S., it does insist that developing countries meet higher production standards for the goods they intend to send to the U.S.

Hooker said the agency can be fairly effective, despite its infrequent product inspections, because it brings pressure to bear on the system of production and works with foreign governments to ensure compliance.

But government regulations are not the only — or even the most effective — means of enforcing high standards. Hooker said the market also offers powerful incentives.

The pet food companies who received tainted ingredients, for instance, “are going to ask for things much more rigorously than a nation can ask for. And they will get them,” he said, or they will take their business elsewhere.

Similarly, he said, Mexican vegetable growers may have even higher production standards than U.S. farmers because certain hygienic practices can increase the shelf-life of food, allowing the use of slower — and cheaper — shipping methods.

No reports of sickened pets in China
Mary Peng, a manager of the International Center for Veterinary Services in Beijing, said she had been getting four or five queries a day from worried pet owners in China asking which food brands are safe.

“We have not had any reports so far of any animals sickened with these particular symptoms,” Peng said. “It’s very much a public health issue. This should be something that needs to be addressed.”

A manager in charge of purchasing at Paiduge Pet Food Co. in Beijing said she had not heard of any cases of poisoning.

“But we will get worried if it is true,” said the executive, who would give only her surname, Zhang.

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