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Filler Responsible For Pet Food Deaths Is Open Secret in China

nytimes.com — As American food safety regulators head to China to investigate how a chemical made from coal found its way into pet food that killed dogs and cats in the United States, workers in this heavily polluted northern city openly admit that the substance is routinely added to animal feed as a fake protein.

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  • Deamond606, on 10/12/2007, -85/+2BLURGA BLURGALURGALALURG IM A MAILMAN!
    • TheG2, on 10/12/2007, -7/+49I lost a dear family pet to this ***** and your lack of respect for the families makes me think you deserve the same unfortunate horrible death my dog did.

      Go ***** yourself you inconsiderate prick.

      Edit: Sorry for the language but what the hell.
    • gldfshnpcklejar, on 10/12/2007, -43/+6Pets don't have fillings, you're an idiot. Oh well it died, at least it didn't kill any humans. I feed my dog babies, so I know it's not going to be poisoned.
    • phineous, on 10/12/2007, -3/+20The FDA still insists that only 16 dogs and cats were affected by this. I'm shocked every time the mainstream media parrots this figure.
    • SuperCujo, on 10/12/2007, -25/+9You know, if American pet owners actually cared about their pets they would spend an extra 50c or $1 to buy the American made stuff and have the quality be guaranteed.

      Or they could spend some time making the pet food themselves and make something much more nutritious and end up with a healthier pet.

      Remember, you get what you pay for and expressing all this anger for the death of a few pets which their owners saved money on is just plain stupid.
    • BlackCow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+16"The FDA still insists that only 16 dogs and cats were affected by this. I'm shocked every time the mainstream media parrots this figure."

      Only 16! My mom works as a veterinarian in Chicago, she had lost count how many animals she had to put down due to liver damage from this food poisoning! I can't believe thats how small they are making this look.
    • benjpw, on 10/12/2007, -12/+5Welcome to neoliberal globalization!
    • kefler, on 10/12/2007, -0/+21Supercujo: you retard, high end brands such as science diet and even some very expensive 'organic' brands were contaminated.


      right now, I'd pay a 2x markup for any petfood product that could advertise and backup the sources of its ingredients as being entirely from the U.S. Actually I hope "Nothing from China!" stickers become in fashion.
    • Comatose51, on 10/12/2007, -7/+4Because you know if they admit there were more, there would be a class action lawsuit. The government in bed with corporations, just like the good old days in Germany before the Russians came and wrecked the party.
    • Supurcell, on 10/12/2007, -11/+4I hope you all learned a valuable lesson from this. Don't feed your pet chinese food, they'll be hungry an hour later, or dead.
    • ldkronos, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7blackcow@ "she had lost count how many animals she had to put down due to liver damage from this food poisoning!"

      Well, there you go. Those animals didn't "die" from the contaminated food. They died from the euthanasia. Very convenient for their statistics, isn't it.
    • faskippy, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4@goldfish...When you said: "Pets don't have fillings, you're an idiot.", did you mean to say "feelings"? Whose the idiot?
  • JeremyTTU, on 10/12/2007, -13/+5So does this mean that it is time to threaten sanctions against China? There has to be some way for the elite rich and powerful Americans to make money off this. Oh wait, too late... they are all ready getting the cheapest labor and cheapest ingredients to give us to feed our pets.

    I'm starting to sound like a hippie now, but I'm thinking its time for getting giant rabbits and cooking rice for my dog. Too bad I really like rabbit and I'll have to declare some bs holiday so I can eat all the rabbits and then my dog will just have the rice to eat.

    I'm so ronery...
  • subman697, on 10/12/2007, -1/+35Goods from China that are non-perishable? Fine

    Food from China? NO WAY. We are begging, as a nation, to have a major catastrophe in our food supply.
  • airwalkery2k, on 10/12/2007, -4/+17China struck first! C'mon, boys, it's time for war. ...Again!
    • Ajajadude, on 10/12/2007, -5/+13I say we send the Canadians by proxy.
    • AdipicAcid, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Under this Administration the strategy would be to launch an immediate attack, on Nepal. After all they are sorta maybe close to the folks who caused us the grief.
  • JavertHolmes, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14"Many companies buy melamine scrap to make animal feed, such as fish feed,” said Ji Denghui, general manager of the Fujian Sanming Dinghui Chemical Company, which sells melamine. “I don’t know if there’s a regulation on it. Probably not. No law or regulation says ‘don’t do it,’ so everyone’s doing it."

    That's their right, I guess. It's also my right not to ever touch a food item from China ever again. Hopefully that message will get across to other countries.
    • AriaStar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+19It's NOT their right when they pass it off as being the real thing.
    • etnu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9It's not their right to mislabel food and have unsuspecting people or animals consume it.

      I don't even like how companies are allowed to just put "artificial" or "natural" flavors on the packaging. In an age where poison is passed off as protein, people need to be aware of what is in the food that they're eating.
    • jsavage58, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1good luck avoiding it. look at the labels on your food folks. We used to be the "worlds bread basket", now we can hardly make our own apple juice
    • bacon_skoda, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2don't forget fake baby formulas that actually hurt some babies in china.
      and fake soy sauce:i've heard water, salt and dye.
      even people in china are now fearing these scams that kill or hurt.
      fake baby formulas, how low can you go?
  • aemaeth7, on 10/12/2007, -16/+709 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
  • laserblazer, on 10/12/2007, -3/+30Why the hell does America need to import pet food from China? This global trading scheme is ***** retarded.
    • InetRoadkill, on 10/12/2007, -3/+32Even worse, we're importing wheat gluten. Aren't we supposed to be the big wheat producer in the world? What the hell happened?
    • SuperCujo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9You buy wheat gluten from China because you need it to put into your massively processed foods. Oh, and it is cheaper to buy the already processed gluten from china made from your wheat than it is to process it at home.

      Typical in the world economy. Similar to Australia cutting down all its trees and chipping them, then selling it to Japan (or whoever) to make paper which we buy back. Same thing with Iron Ore. It is cheaper to outsource the processing.
    • kuzotz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6kinda like how if you buy lumber in Alaska that lumber isn't Alaskan its most likely form Georgia.. Whilst your Alaskan lumber&wood goes to Japan.
    • sarazen, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1"kinda like how if you buy lumber in Alaska that lumber isn't Alaskan its most likely form Georgia.. Whilst your Alaskan lumber&wood goes to Japan."

      Actually Alaskan lumber goes nowhere. There is a small amount that is locally produced and used and the rest just stays in the forest. We tired exporting it to Japan and back to the states, but it turned out to be cost ineffective. Some of the rest of our lumber is imported, most often from the west cost states, but sometimes elsewhere. You can think of Alaska as a giant island. Most stuff has to be brought it because it is cheaper to do so than to try and build up the manufacturing locally. Even the local dairies are starting to disappear as the price of imported (from the lower 48) milk goes down.
  • HabboX, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14Counterfeiting is a way of life in China and the majority of the world's population tolerates it because the direct victims are often large record and software companies. Now this counterfeiting way of life is poisoning our pet food supply (and our prescription drugs). But Hey! Look at how cheap the stuff is?
  • brotherfranciz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Reminds me of the Simpsons episode with the power bars made from apple cores and newspaper...
  • fozzybear, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1Its called Economics.

    Since we consume so much, its in their best interest to keep us healthy and consuming so much. If they poison us their economy will crash.

    We do need to implement the same regulations we have in locally made food products as ones imported though.
  • Isgall, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17That pisses me off that it wasn't an accident that killed peoples pets, it was a cost cutting measure.
  • J4k3, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11***** assholes. I hope those responsible burn in hell, but before that, a good punishment would be to force the guilty ones to eat the same damn contaminated pet food they produced! That'll teach those scumbags!
  • crashflow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9It is horrible that melamine is used in pet food exported to the US. after reading the artcle, I hope the Chinese government does something about the melamine in animal feed. That would either end up killing a lot of poultry and livestock, or end up largely concentrated in the meat and chicken served on the dinner tables of 1.5 billion unsuspecting Chinese people.

    FTA
    "A man named Jing, who works in the sales department said on Friday that prices of melamine have been rising, but he said that he had no idea how the company’s melamine scrap is used.
    “We have an auction for melamine scrap every three months,” he said. “I haven’t heard of it being added to animal feed. It’s not for animal feed.”"

    ignorance is bliss.
  • chembro84, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11China is not ready to be selling us food, they are still in the "anything goes, regulation? what regulation" phase of industrialization. The worst part is that the Chinese beat out domestic suppliers of certain items because they can do it at a better price, the reason they can sell at such low prices is because they literally add poison to the food to make it appear as though it is at a higher quality than it truly is. I will avoid Chinese food products as much as possible in the near future until I see real progress from China with regulation on food and pollution.
    • kuzotz, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2don't eat anything made out of wheat..
    • nanboya, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9While everyone points fingers at the Chinese producers for being the bad guy, don't forget to take a good look in the mirror (as the general public) for refusing to pay for quality; the reason they continue to cut corners on quality and driving the price down because the market demands it with almost a relentless frenzy.

      "The worst part is that the Chinese beat out domestic suppliers of certain items because they can do it at a better price, the reason they can sell at such low prices is because they literally add poison to the food to make it appear as though it is at a higher quality than it truly is."
    • faskippy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@nanboya...understand your point, but do you think for one minute that if we were told what KIND of filler they were putting in pet food, that we still would buy it? When I hear filler, I think flour, rice, food processing scrap, yada, yada and yada. But melamine? Never in a million years would that come to mind. What mental giant came up with that brainstorm? It's my fault if it's on the label and I still buy it. It's their fault if it's not on the label, and my dog dies. Greed. Pure and simple.
    • Vishap, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0How though? I was buying cat food and reading the ingredients. They say what's in the food, but of course they don't say where the ingredients come from. It's the same with all brands too, from the cheap ones to the fancy ones. I just found myself staring at them and wondering what percentage of the ingredients came from other countries, and which ones.
  • Enlightenment, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9I don't mind purchasing products from China, but I don't trust them when it comes to any type of food, even stuff used for our animals. Heck, large parts of China is still basically a 3rd-world country, and heck rules, they don't care about rules, just do what they want until someone gets hurts or complains enough to change it.

    The best thing that Americans and Europeans could do is to buy less products from China, and NO food based products!!! Boycott those assholes!

    America is one of the largest wheat producers in the world, so why the hell are we buying wheat gluten from China? Huh??? What the hell is going on???

    • KhaotikEvile, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0I thought the point was that we weren't buying wheat gluten...
    • benjpw, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3@Enlightenment

      This is how modern capitalism works. We can easily exploit the land and labor of China to make our pet food so we do. You call them assholes but do you think its inherent that the CCP decided one day to start making pet food. These "assholes" are American multinationals my friend. Opps!
    • Rheikon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1benjpw is right. this happens in all our products. they usually would never get away with what they do but there are nice loop holes that make it so they dont have to tell you whats in anything really. i dont think there is any food we eat on a day to day basis that is not processesd in some terrible way. all you have to do is look up what some of the chemicals for flavors and preservatives they use are. its funny we all think about when our stupid ass pets die. wait 30 years when people start dying of it. oops!
  • Enlightenment, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Importing food products from China is about as stupid as importing bottled water!!
  • etnu, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Chinese companies cutting corners in unethical ways to save a buck for their American slave masters?

    I AM SHOCKED!

    You just can't have the ***** we get this cheaply without something suffering. It doesn't matter if it's the low-quality furniture, the low quality clothes, or low-quality pet food.

    Businesses don't just go to China for cheap labor. They go there because they know regulation is lax and they can get away with just about anything as long as nobody dies (right away).
  • dilbert111, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1its called Globalization people....most of you pukes on digg want this *****.
    Jobs overseas raise their peoples standard of living right? They are going to catch up with the US right?
    Total BS.... Not until they have the same protections that we do in the US....which will never happen.
    Idiots.
  • benjpw, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4Why are people digging down the people pointing out the fact that this is a natural by-product of getting China to make our stuff? Think about it. We pollute their country with all the useless crap we "need" to buy then they sell the pollutants back to us. It is the perfect capitalist cycle!

    I like how people are more angry about lassie dying then the tons of Chinese workers affected in a "heavily polluted northern city". Sigh.
    • Comatose51, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2Because an American dog is worth more than a Chinese. My lassie, yes it was a collie, cost my family $450 or so. My father tells me that growing up in China, when they execute someone by mistake they paid the family less than the equivalent of $200 for compensation. So yes an American dog is worth more than a Chinese, sadly enough. The sadder thing is people like my father accepts that sad fact of life without protest. If they don't value their own life, what do you think they think of your pets?
    • SteelChicken, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3China is an independent nation last I checked, dont blame this on Americans or anyone else.
  • TheToecutter, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Chinese quality control at its finest.
  • voidx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@phineous:
    I know the comment was a while ago but the article clearly states that there were more then 16 incidents of sickened pets.

    "The Food and Drug Administration has already banned imports of wheat gluten from China after it received more than 14,000 reports of pets believed to have been sickened by packaged food.
  • FallenOmen, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1Chinese bastards why would they care they eat dogs and cats over there @!!
  • yinako, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1LOL this is nothing, in China there are baby milk powders that contains cement, as a result 100's of babies became brain dead. the guy was sentenced for only 2 years in prison or something like that, but he got out and did it again, i think because its just cheaper?! anyway ppl are outrage about it, yet the law don't mean *****. so...now American dogs got poisoned...sorry you lost your pets, but this is nothing compare to losing your kids because of cheap milk powder.
  • badapplestudio, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5The truth is, that almost every WET food manufacturer uses MENU-FOODS for packaging and processing. NOT DRY FOOD, WET FOOD. It's too expensive for them to buy and upkeep their own cannery. Even some of the so called ORGANIC brands. Some of them, like Wellness, go in before they process and pack, and scrub all the parts that come in contact with food, so there is no cross-contamination. Everything is sterilized. I think Newman's doesn't use Menu-foods.

    You would be better off buying local, or close to local, dry food and making your own wet food. Buy in bulk from local farms and convert the scrap and dark meat to pet food. Chicken, chicken liver, brown rice, carrots, fish meal. Slow cook it, so it doesn't loose nutrients, and divide it up into used yogurt cups. Do it once or twice per month. Feed it to the pets every 2 days or so.

    Don't feed your pets anything you wouldn't want to eat. Their like kids. Don't have one unless you can provide what they need.

    And don't trust the FDA or Agriculture Dept. They are just as crooked and nasty as China. Why do you think everything is made of #2 feed corn? Why do think the government is all hip on ethanol now ( after 100 years)? Go ask Monsanto...

  • Ndric, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Why the hell would you feed your pets something made from China? They ***** make fake eggs for *****'s sake
  • luckyp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2We used to make all our pet food from scratch. Then we got lazy and bought some. Never again. There is always somebody out to cheat you, whether it's food or anything else we buy. And it's not just China. A lot of our imported vegetables are contaminated with pesticides and handled in an unclean manner. It's just not possible to monitor all the stuff we import. I don't know what we can do about this but in our case we grow as much of our own as we can and frequent the local farmers markets which I think decreases our odds of getting dangerous food.
  • faskippy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+04 dogs. 2 big, 2 little. This is what I feed... 1 lb. chicken livers, 1 cup flax seed meal, 6 cups cooked rice, (cooled), 2 brewers yeast tabs dissolved in cold water, or crushed, and 2 eggs, beaten. Mix and serve. Works fine for mine. All of these ingredients are cheap, AND healthy.
  • Jerim, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2This is the sort of thing we will probably see more of. Although China is advancing economically, they still have a long ways to go in quality control and basic human rights. There doesn't seem to be any standards or oversight in China like there is in the rest of the world. Perhaps this is why they can produce products so cheaply. All I am saying is that we should think twice about buying from China, for the moment. The U.S. should threaten economic sanctions unless China can improve worker's rights and the oversight of Chinese made products.
  • bongowaxx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Made in China" is a real deal breaker for me right about now.
  • dwiezel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"made in china" was always a deal breaker for me. I go out of my way to avoid products from china. Unfortunately, we rely on their "slave" labor way too much. The trade imbalance is stifling.

    All that aside, if it was a product made in the USA that poisoned and killed pets in china, they would be calling for war. What are we doing about this debacle? The chinese company should be shutdown and liquidated to compensate those who have lost their pets. Then, we should not allow ANY food products into the USA from china. This is as bad as mad cow disease!
  • msjo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Can someone provide a list of Companies that are selling this tainted food in America?
  • notemaking, on 07/06/2008, -0/+0Looking for Diabetic Dog Food this is the site
    http://dogfoodguide.blogspot.com/2008/06/diamond-d ...
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