China Tells Little About Illness That Kills Pigs, Officials Say

By KEITH BRADSHER
The NewYork Times
May 8, 2007

HONG KONG, May 7 — A mysterious epidemic is killing pigs in southeastern China, but international and Hong Kong authorities said Monday that the Chinese government was providing little information about it or the contaminated wheat gluten that has caused death and illness in pets in the United States.

The lack of even basic details is reviving longstanding questions about whether China is willing to share information about health and food safety issues with potentially global implications.

The Chinese government — and particularly the government of Guangdong Province, which is next to Hong Kong — was criticized in 2003 for concealing information about the SARS virus when it emerged in Foshan, 95 miles northwest of Hong Kong. After SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, spread to Hong Kong and around the world, top Chinese officials promised to improve disclosure.

But officials in Hong Kong, at the World Health Organization and at the Food and Agriculture Organization said Monday that they had been told almost nothing about the latest pig deaths and that they had been given limited details about the apparently unrelated problem of wheat gluten contamination.

Because pigs can catch many of the same diseases as people, including bird flu, the W.H.O. and F.A.O. maintain global networks to track and investigate unexplained patterns of pig deaths.

Hong Kong television and newspapers were full of lurid accounts on Monday of pigs staggering around with blood pouring from their bodies in Gaoyao and neighboring Yunfu, both in Guangdong Province. The Apple Daily newspaper said that up to 80 percent of the pigs had died in the area, that peasants were engaged in panic selling of ailing animals at deep discounts and that pig carcasses were floating down a river.

The disease reportedly started killing pigs after Chinese New Year celebrations in February, but is now spreading. The state-controlled news media in China have had a few reports on the wheat gluten problem and almost nothing on the pig deaths.

A man who answered the phone at the city government in Gaoyao, 140 miles northwest of Hong Kong, confirmed late Monday afternoon that pigs were dying there. He declined to give his name.

Dr. Kwok Ka-ki, a surgeon who represents the medical profession in Hong Kong’s legislature, said the Chinese government should share all information about pig deaths with the Chinese public and with Hong Kong, which Britain returned to China in 1997.

“They definitely need to tell the public, but also people in the city, as to the extent of the outbreak, how the disease is being controlled and the impact on public health,” he said. “It would help a lot to relieve the worry, and it would help the rest of China to fight the disease.”

There have been no reports of people becoming ill from the disease. But the SARS experience has left Hong Kong with lasting jitters about mysterious diseases coming from mainland China.

Medical experts said that the extent of the pigs’ bleeding, including reports of bloody skin lesions, did not sound like the usual symptoms of bird flu, but added that the pig deaths needed to be investigated.

Two spokeswomen for the Hong Kong Food and Environmental Hygiene Department said the Guangdong authorities had told the department only that no live pigs were being shipped from the Yunfu and Gaoyao areas to Hong Kong.

A spokesman for the Hong Kong Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department said there were no signs of suspicious deaths among Hong Kong’s pigs, and referred questions about pigs in Guangdong to the food department.

Both departments said last week in written responses to questions that they were not testing wheat gluten imported from the mainland for the presence of melamine scrap, a residue from the manufacture of a chemical used in plastics production. The presence of melamine scrap in pet food has been linked to the deaths of as many as 4,000 cats and dogs in the United States, and prompted the culling of chickens that ate contaminated feed.

Hong Kong officials expressed surprise on Monday when told that the official Xinhua news agency mentioned a month ago that the mainland had begun nationwide testing of wheat gluten for melamine.

Animal feed dealers in northeastern China said late last month that the two main destinations for feed mixed with melamine had been the Yangtze Delta region near Shanghai and the Pearl River Delta region near Hong Kong.

Petfood recall widens on cross-contamination

By Susan Heavey
Sunday, May 6, 2007

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A major pet food recall has expanded again as manufacturer Menu Foods Income Fund revealed evidence of cross-contamination by some cat and dog food pulled since March.

About 4,000 complaints of related pet deaths have been reported to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration by Thursday, but the agency said that only 16 deaths of cats and dogs have been confirmed.The pet foods recalled late on Wednesday were made at the same facility at the same time as other Menu Foods products that contained wheat gluten tainted with the chemical melamine, the company said in statement.

Menu Foods, which initiated a recall of 60 million packages of pet food on March 16, said the additional products were not supposed to contain wheat gluten, but a customer report and study results indicated cross-contamination.

Since then, Menu Foods has expanded its recall several times.

Melamine, used in plastics and fertilizer, has turned up in wheat gluten and rice protein concentrate imported from China and shipped to various pet food manufacturers. More than 100 brands of pet food have been recalled after reports of kidney failure in cats and dogs and several pet deaths.

Menu Foods makes pet food sold under a variety of labels such as Iams, Eukanuba, President’s Choice and Nutro Max Gourmet Classics and store brands sold at Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Safeway Inc. and Petsmart Inc.

Other pet food manufacturers, including Colgate-Palmolive Co., Nestle SA, and Del Monte Pet Products, have also pulled some brands.

The recalls came amid mounting reports of pet deaths and thousands of consumer complaints to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s hotline.

The agency has received about 17,000 complaints of sick pets, with deaths reported in half of about 8,000 complaints that have been entered into an FDA database, it said.

LITTLE RISK FOR HUMANS

The FDA has expanded its investigation to include livestock feed that contained tainted pet food and made its way to some 6,000 hogs and as many as 3.1 million chickens.

While both the FDA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have said food from those pigs and chickens poses little risk for humans, they have called for remaining livestock that consumed the feed to be slaughtered.Wheat gluten and rice protein concentrate are also used in human foods such as bread and pasta, but there is “no evidence that it has ended up in baby food or for that matter any other human food as an ingredient,” said FDA Assistant Commissioner for Food Protection David Acheson.

He said the FDA was continuing to hold vegetable-based proteins from China at the border pending further inspection as well as testing samples of pet foods and ingredients already in the United States.

Of 700 domestic samples tested, about 400 tested positive for melamine and were traced back to the two Chinese companies — Binzhou Futian Biology Technology Co. Ltd. and Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Co. Ltd.

FDA investigators are in China working with officials there, Acheson said.

The FDA has said it thinks a combination of melamine and melamine-related compounds form crystals in some pets’ kidneys that can cause problems. “We don’t believe that the melamine alone is the cause of this,” Acheson said.

(Additional reporting by Christopher Doering)

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