Can the FDA Assure Safety and Security of the Food Supply? Part 2 hearing

TUESDAY, JULY 17, 2007

Diminished Capacity: Can the FDA Assure the Safety and Security of the Nation's Food Supply? – Part 2
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
9:30 a.m. in room 2123 Rayburn House Office Building
Witness List
Connect to the Video Webcast (100 kbps)
http://energycommerce.house.gov/membios/schedule.shtml

Witness list:
http://energycommerce.house.gov/cmte_mtgs/110-oi-hrg.071707.Witness%20List.pdf

Thanks to reader Mike for staying on top of this.
I'm of course hoping that someone will ask them timeline questions.

Also I'm hoping for some
"What did you know and when did you know it?" questions (It always seems to come back to that, doesn't it...)

As I've reminded people, the FDA has no recall power, except for baby formula.
So faced with a new problem (chickens and hogs that ate melamine and c-acid laden pet food) the FDA decided that instead of telling Big Chicken and Big Pig to recall the chickens and pigs, they "worked closely with industry" and created a risk assessment report based on, how shall I say this politely, weak science.

And guess what, the risk assessment said, "Sure send it out to the humans, based on old data from other species and not on any actual current feeding tests, the probability is low that it won't be a problem." Hey America, how does it feel to be Big Chicken's guinea pig? Would have been nice if we could have known when we were being used as a guinea pig right? So we could say, "I don't trust your "risk assessment" please tell me which chickens were the ones I ate.

But I always wondered, if it wasn't a problem then why didn't they tell us the NAMES of the big chicken farm that sold the chickens? Why didn't they say, "The chicken is as safe as houses based on our "risk assessment" so the company that is selling it to you is ____________."?

BTW, I'm pretty sure I know which one of the Big Chicken players it is, but of course after I alerted the advertisers to the violent rhetoric of the talk radio people and they shut down my blog and threatened me I have no desire to expose myself to the censorship games of yet another multi-billion dollar industry. (Hey, maybe I should tell people if they send me a self addressed stamped envelop along with $100 bucks then I can say, "You didn't hear it from me." )

Here's my questions that they won't get to because I don't have any real power (aka lobbyists whispering into my ear).

Did Big Chicken put the pressure on the FDA to create this "risk assessment" so that they could get the USDA stamp so they could sell to humans? What role did Big Chicken and Big Pig have in this process of determining the safety of the food that they probably didn't want to cull? Was that contact appropriate?

I wonder how they will respond. I mean it's not like they need to lie if you asked them. I'm sure they would just say that they were "working closely with industry". Say for example Big Chicken called the FDA and said, "Create a test so I don't have to kill 20 million chickens and 56,000 hogs." Would it be WRONG of them to suggest that? I'm sure that it would be seen as just a suggestion and it's not like they are trying to intimidate the FDA. I do wonder if there are some rules and guidelines that they are breaking-- maybe Lisa Shames and the wonderful folks at the GAO could tell us.

NOTE: We don't use the precautionary principle here. Therefore looks like we are going the China route. So I guess the rule is "If it's not EXPLICITLY going to kill you, go ahead and put it in. And then, if later, we find out that it DOES kill people, well then we'll stop."

I do hope one of the fine reps asks about the process of creating the risk assessment, and then asks, "Who's chickens were they and then where did those chickens and pigs get sent to?"

I'm sure they have a good answers, the best money can buy.

Updated and edited, draft was posted first. I blame Haloscan.

Question for Dr. Kenneth Petersen. Whose Chickens are They?

A very simple question for:

Dr. Kenneth Petersen, assistant administrator for field operations with the Food Safety and Inspection Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. OR

Terri Teuber, USDA spokeswoman or
Mike Johanns, Agriculture Secretary or
Julie Zawisza, assistant commissioner for public affairs or
Dr. David Acheson, the assistant commissioner for Food Protection, FDA.
This is regarding the millions of chickens that ate tainted feed. (story here)

Q. If the 20 million chickens are safe to eat, what are the names of the companies who are selling these chickens to the public?

• If you won't tell us, why not?
• If you don't tell us, does that mean they really aren't safe?
• What about the 3.5 million chickens that when out in February? Who sold those to people?
• What rules are you following regarding disclosure of this information?
• Did you cut a deal with the chicken processor(s) to not name the names?

Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said this during comments to the Organic Trade Association.

"We literally found that the dilution is so minute, in fact in some cases you can't even test and find melamine any more in that product," (link)

Great Mike, sounds grand. Now who is selling this chicken? Where can I buy it? It sounds like the Safest. Chicken. Ever.

Since I'm not allowed to ask the question in your press conference, I'm hoping one or more of the team of journalists will use one of their precious questions to get this answer. And when the question is dodged, maybe another journalist will use their ONE precious question to ask it again. And again. Because really, if it's safe enough to eat, why wouldn't you tell us the names? Oh and don't forget which lots, which dates and shipped to which stores.

Maybe the public has a right to know where to buy the Safest. Chicken. Ever.

Below is a list of folks who are playing this game of chicken with the USDA and FDA. The USDA and FDA have held back information until they could put out the, "Melamine Chicken: It's safe as houses" press release. Next the FDA/USDA will dance around the question of whose chicken was processed and whom did they sell them too. I'm really curious to see which spin they will use. These are my guesses:

• We don't know
  
• It's proprietary information
• It's irrelevant since all chicken is safe. Trust us. Trust our assumptions.
  
• It's not really important
• There is no difference between this chicken and regular chicken, therefore it would be irresponsible of us to single out a single processor

My money is on the last one, it has the right mix of arrogance and deference to the honchos in the chicken biz.

Some of the press following this are very sharp (see list below). The USDA and FDA are treating the media (and the public they represent) like they are ignorant of science, politics and how the world works.
Frankly I have great confidence that a few of these folks WILL get to this question. And maybe they will get to some of these other questions in dark blue from my "Calling all science journalists" post.


Abigail Goldman with Los Angeles Times.
Deidre Henderson.Boston Globe.
Joe Johns with CNN
Randy Schmitt, Associated Press
David Curley, ABC News
*Julie Schmitt, USA Today.
*Elizabeth Weiss, USA Today
Nancy Cortis, CBS News or
*Dr. Debbye Turner, CBS Early Show
Brooke Turnbulle, or Dan Grutnech from CNN
Loren Edder, Wall Street Journal
*Steve Hedges, Chicago Tribune
Susan Heedy, Reuters.
Bill Tomson with Dow Jones
Andrew Martin, New York Times
John Rockoff, Baltimore Sun
Heather Harland, NHK Japan
*Karen Roebuck, Pittsburgh Tribune Review
David Brown, Washington Post
Steve Osbey, The Greenville News
Alan Bjerga, Bloomberg News

J.M. Hirsch, Associated Press

(list and spelling from the May 3 2007 transcript of the conference call)
* These are the folks that I have the most confidence in asking sharp questions to get to the truth. If only Christie Keith, from PetConnection were allowed to ask questions. Sigh.

CEOs for Menu and ChemNutra Testify

Paul Henderson, CEO Menu Foods and Stephen Miller, CEO ChemNutra Testimony before the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, April 24, 2007 (video Link)

I was hoping I could use this video to illustrate some conflict between their House testimony, under oath, with what we know now. I didn't spot any yet, but all you recall bloodhounds are welcome to have at it.

But what struck me watching this: Note the excuses. Maybe they just apply to legal property, pets.

The same excuses can't be applied to humans... or can they?

The FDA refuses to tell us the names of the farms that raised the chicken that millions of us ate. If we knew who those farms were we could ask them. "Who did you sell those chickens too?" But it looks like the FDA is applying the same logic to the chickens that Menu and ChemNutra applied to the feed that they got.

"Is there any way we know then if other wheat gluten, or other products or other things have been intentionally altered? You don't know until after the fact? Right" -Rep. Stupak

"There wasn't a testing protocols for identifying it." -Henderson, CEO Menu Foods.

But there is now.

"Before this incident did you ever do any testing of any of the products that came from China?" -Rep. Stupak

"No, there was no known issue to test for."- Miller, CEO ChemNutra

But there is now.

ChemNutra had confidence in the company, but they didn't do any testing.
Do we have confidence in the FDA? Did they do the testing for us or just say, "Well there haven't been a lot of extra deaths from eating chicken so our guess, based on this dilution effect theory, is working."

Remember in the movie 2001 where the killer computer, Hal, decided that they should just let a component fail instead of replacing it first? I guess the plan is to do the same with humans as we did with pets

FDA to Humans: "Let 'em eat Chicken."


If humans start dying, well then we'll tell you who sold you that tainted chicken.

All this talk about dilution effect would be more credible if they had some sample results they could show us. And maybe some tests to look at. They are already experimenting on humans, maybe a few rats could be tested while we are waiting.

Oh, and anyone want to talk about the accumulation effect? Think second-hand smoke or asbestos or even pions from Mad Cows. How much do you have to eat until you get sick or die? We don't know for sure, but when it happens, call us.

The good news? I understand we can buy some human kidneys on the black market in China....

IHT Article: "Feed sellers in China routinely use protein substitute" Pulled?

For some reason the article below about melamime routinely being added to animal feed in China disappeared. I wrote them a letter to find out why. I'd call, but it's 5:00 AM in Hong Kong. Probably just a technical glitch because of heavy traffic. Just to help them out I've replicated the entire article below. Once they get more capacity up I'll snip it and link to it (don't want to violate any copyrights!)

April 29, 2:45 pm PDT, San Francisco

Press Relations, Asia/Pacific
International Herald Tribune
May-Ling Nam
1201 K Wah Centre
191 Java Road, North Point
Hong Kong

Press Relations, U.S.
Diane C McNulty
229 West 43rd Street
New York
NY 10036-3959
USA

Dear Ms. McNulty and Ms. Nam:

The article titled "Feed sellers in China routinely use protein substitute"

Is currently unavailable on your website.

By David Barboza and Alexei Barrionuevo
Published: April 29, 2007

Story at url:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/29/news/food.php?page=1
and http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/29/news/food.php?page=2

This has disappeared from the International Herald Tribune website as of 1:45 pm Pacific Daylight time in San Francisco. As of 2:45 pm PDT it is still off line. I have spoken to several colleagues around the United States and it is unavailable for them as well. This does not appear to be an isolated problem in my region.

Is there a problem with the story that is being corrected? Is there another source of this important story? There are many people that are very interested in a story about contaminated food being sold to the United States.

Please advise,
Sincerely,
Mr. Spocko

www.spockosbrain.com

For your identification purposes below is the text of the article:
Feed sellers in China routinely use protein substitute

The Shandong Mingshui Great Chemical factory in Zhangqiu, Shandong Province, which manufactures urea, melamine and melamine scrap (Ariana Lindquist for The New York Times)

By David Barboza and Alexei Barrionuevo
Published: April 29, 2007

ZHANGQIU, China: American food safety regulators trying to figure out how an industrial chemical called melamine contaminated so much pet food in the United States might come to this heavily polluted city in Shandong Province in the northern part of the country.

Here at the Shandong Mingshui Great Chemical Group factory, huge boiler vats are turning coal into melamine, which is used to create plastics and fertilizer.

But the leftover melamine scrap, small acorn-sized chunks of white rock, is then being sold to local entrepreneurs, who say they secretly mix a powdered form of the scrap into animal feed to artificially enhance the protein level.

The melamine powder has been dubbed "fake protein" and is used to deceive those who raise animals into thinking they are buying feed that provides higher nutrition value.

"It just saves money," says a manager at an animal feed factory here. "Melamine scrap is added to animal feed to boost the protein level."

The practice is widespread in China. For years animal feed sellers have been able to cheat buyers by blending the powder into feed with little regulatory supervision, according to interviews with melamine scrap traders and agricultural workers here.

But now, melamine is at the center of a massive, multinational pet food recall after it was linked earlier this month to the deaths and injuries of thousands of cats and dogs in the United States and South Africa.

No one knows exactly how melamine - which had not been believed to be particularly toxic - became so fatal in pet food, but its presence in any form of American food is illegal.

U.S. regulators are now headed to China to figure out why pet food ingredients imported from here, including wheat gluten, were contaminated with high levels of the chemical.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has banned imports of wheat gluten from China and ordered the recall of over 60 million packages of pet food. And last week, the agency opened a criminal investigation in the case and searched the offices of at least one pet food supplier.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture also stepped in Thursday, ordering more than 6,000 hogs to be quarantined or slaughtered after some of the pet food ingredients laced with melamine were accidentally sent to hog farms in eight states, including California.

Scientists are now trying to determine whether melamine could be harmful to human health.

The huge pet food recall is raising questions in the United States about regulatory controls at a time when food supplies are increasingly being sourced globally. Some experts complain that the FDA is understaffed and underfunded, making it incapable of safeguarding America's food supply.

"They have fewer people inspecting product at the ports than ever before," says Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety for the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington. "Until China gets programs in place to verify the safety of their products, they need to be inspected by U.S. inspectors. This open-door policy on food ingredients is an open invitation for an attack on the food supply, either intentional or unintentional."

The pet food case is also putting China's agricultural exports under greater scrutiny because the country's dubious food safety record and history of excessive antibiotic and pesticide use.

In recent years, for instance, China's food safety scandals have involved everything from fake baby milk formulas and soy sauce made from human hair, to instances where cuttlefish were soaked in calligraphy ink to improve their color and eels were fed contraceptive pills to make them grow long and slim.

China's government disputes any suggestion that melamine from the country could have killed pets. But Friday, regulators here banned the use of melamine in vegetable proteins made for export or for use in domestic food supplies.

Yet it is clear from visiting this region of northern China is that for years melamine has been quietly mixed into Chinese animal feed and then sold to unsuspecting farmers as protein-rich pig, poultry and fish feed.

Many animal feed operators advertise on the Internet seeking to purchase melamine scrap. And melamine scrap producers and traders said in recent interviews that they often sell to animal feed makers.

"Many companies buy melamine scrap to make animal feed, such as fish feed," says Ji Denghui, general manager of the Fujian Sanming Dinghui Chemical Company. "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. The laws in China are like that, aren't they? If there's no accident, there won't be any regulation."

(Page 2 of 2)

Most local feed companies do not admit that they use melamine. But last Friday here in Zhangqiu, a fast-growing industrial city southeast of Beijing, a pair of animal feed producers explained in great detail how they purchase low-grade wheat, corn, soybean or other proteins and then mix in small portions of nitrogen-rich melamine, whose chemical properties give a bag of animal feed an inflated protein level under standard tests.

Melamine is the new scam of choice, they say, because urea - another nitrogen-rich chemical that works similarly - is illegal for use in pig and poultry feed and can be easily tested for in China as well as the United States.

"If you add it in small quantities, it won't hurt the animals," said one animal feed entrepreneur whose name is being withheld to protect him from prosecution.

The man - who works in a small animal feed operation that consists of a handful of storage and mixing areas - said he has mixed melamine into animal feed for years.

He said he was not currently using melamine, which is actually made from urea. But he then pulled out a plastic bag containing what he said was melamine powder and said he could dye it any color.

Asked whether he could create an animal feed and melamine brew, he said yes, he has access to huge supplies of melamine. Using melamine-spiked pet food ingredient was not a problem, he said, even thought the product would be weak in protein.

"Pets are not like pigs or chickens," he said casually, explaining that cheating them on protein won't matter. "They don't need to grow fast."

The feed seller makes a heftier profit because the substitute melamine scrap is much cheaper than purchasing soy, wheat or corn protein.

"It's true you can make a lot more profit by putting melamine in," said a second animal feed seller here in Zhangqiu. "Melamine will cost you about $1.20 per ton for each protein count whereas real protein costs you about $6, so you can see the difference."

Few people outside of agriculture know about melamine here. The Chinese media, which is strictly censored, has not reported much about melamine or the pet food recall overseas. And no one in agriculture here seems to believe that melamine is particularly harmful to animals or pets in small doses.

A man named Jing, who works in the sales department at the Shandong Mingshui Great Chemical Group, said Friday that melamine scrap prices had been rising but he was not aware of how the company's product was being 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."

David Barboza reported from Zhangqiu and Alexei Barrionuevo reported from Chicago. Rujun Shen also contributed reporting.