April 26, 2007

 

USDA: No bans yet on US pork due to hog quarantines

 

 

No foreign countries have indicated they would ban US pork due to concerns farmers fed hogs with feed contaminated by the same chemical found in tainted pet food, a US Department of Agriculture official said Wednesday (Apr 25).

 

USDA Foreign Agriculture Service Administrator Mike Yost told Dow Jones that he had received no indication of bans on US pork.

 

The US government has quarantined hogs in six states because they may have eaten feed tainted with the chemical melamine that has been found in ingredients imported by US pet food manufacturers from China. Melamine, an industrial chemical, has been linked to pet-food deaths in the US and has been found in the urine of hogs in some states.

 

Hog farms in California, New York, South Carolina, North Carolina, Utah and Ohio have been quarantined because the animals may have consumed the tainted feed.

 

Hog farmers sometimes buy salvaged pet food as a cheap feed source. Salvaged pet food can include food that has spilled from bags during manufacturing and is therefore unsuitable for consumption by dogs and cats.

 

The root of the problem--melamine in imported wheat gluten and rice protein-- comes from China, and the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a non-profit consumer group, is calling on the US government to ban those imports, as well as all other grain products from China.

 

Caroline Smith DeWaal, a CSPI director, acknowledged it was a drastic request, stressing the group did not "take that step lightly" but felt it would be the responsible thing to do.

 

She said she believes the issue may be wider than just pet food and livestock feed. "My understanding is that the contaminated wheat gluten--at least some of--was food-grade and what that means is that it could have been used in the human food supply."

 

Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration, is making no move to ban any Chinese products.

 

FDA spokesman Mike Herndon said Wednesday: "Any and all products from the two firms in China who were the source of the melamine contamination are stopped as they come into the country and are examined and sampled."

 

He said FDA is "not ready to blame an entire country for the actions of two companies".

 

It is not yet known if melamine ingested by hogs would taint the meat that could be consumed by humans.

 

Scientists at the University of California-Davis are "working day and night" to create an accurate test to detect if melamine still exists in meat products after processing, spokeswoman for the California Department of Food and Agriculture Nancy Lungren said Wednesday.

 

So far it is unclear if any of the hogs at the quarantined farms entered the human food supply.