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China Food Fears Go From Pets To People
In China, more than 200 million farmers grow a variety of crops on plots of one to two acres, earning less than $200 a year.
(By Eugene Hoshiko -- Associated Press)
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China has a long way to go to achieve this type of modern system, said Hu, a researcher at the Institute of Agricultural Economics and Development who is working on a national pilot program to encourage farmers to keep better records.
China has more than 200 million farmers working one- to two-acre plots. Many of them earn a meager living, sometimes less than $200 a year. Studies have found they often have little understanding of correct chemical or antibiotic use.
The marketing of food and food-related goods in China is also dominated by small-time traders. Small farmers typically take their food to wholesale markets, get cash for their wares but do not exchange documentation with buyers.
Their products are mixed with those of other small farmers, making the source untraceable. "The person who is ultimately buying knows nothing about where it originated," Hami Food's O'Brien said.
In response to the pet deaths in the United States, China is carrying out a nationwide inspection of wheat gluten, but its government has refuted allegations that Chinese companies are responsible for the deaths.
Wheat gluten has industrial uses and China has suggested the shipments that made their way into pet food might never have been intended for that purpose. China's General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said China has never sent wheat gluten abroad for use as a pet-food ingredient. That has raised the question of whether companies that bought the gluten are guilty of misusing it.
On the quarantine authorities' Web site on April 13, an unnamed official said: "If a company used industrial wheat protein as a pet food ingredient and this led to the death of pets, that company should accept the corresponding responsibility."
Investigators from the United States and China are still trying to determine how the contaminated wheat gluten got into pet food.
The FDA said it had traced the ingredient to Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development, near Shanghai. The company has said, however, that it is a middleman and got the wheat gluten from another source.
Reached by phone this week, Xuzhou's general manager, Mao Lijun, declined to comment further about the pet food probe, but said the company "is cooperating with the government investigation."
