Washington – The tainted Chinese ingredients that got incorporated into U.S. pet foods were not wheat gluten and rice protein as advertised but ordinary – albeit seriously contaminated – wheat flour, government investigators said Tuesday.
Early today, Chinese state media reported that managers from two companies that exported the contaminated flour have been detained.
Officials also said some of the contaminated flour, mislabeled as gluten, was mixed into fish food in Canada and exported to the U.S., where it was fed to fish raised for human consumption.
It raises the prospect that some U.S. seafood may be laced with melamine, an industrial toxin.
FDA officials said they do not know how many U.S. fish farms may have used the tainted feed. Some of the fish may have been sold to grocery stories and restaurants, and others may have been raised to stock lakes and rivers for anglers, they said.
Government scientists said they will conduct a risk analysis to determine whether eating fish fed tainted feed raises human health concerns. A similar analysis concluded last weekend that chickens fed small amounts of contaminated pet food were safe for human consumption.
The Beijing Morning Post said China’s quality-control watchdog had confirmed that the Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Co. and Binzhou Futian Biology Technology Co. had exported melamine-tainted products and that managers from both companies had been detained. It gave no further details.
The Washington Post and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
