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The FDA said there was "no evidence"
that Chinese wheat gluten and
rice gluten contaminating pet food had reached the human food chain.
Translated, this means FDA had no idea either way, and merely
hoped and prayed there was an intact "Chinese wall" between pet food
and people food. But the Boston Globe reported today that pigs in California, destined for human consumption, ate contaminated pet food.
A motive for contamination has now been floated:
Federal
regulators suspect that rogue suppliers in China deliberately laced a
trio of protein supplements -- wheat gluten , rice protein concentrate
and corn gluten -- with melamine to inflate the ingredients' protein
levels and price tag.
Fertilizer has nitrogen in it. Food ingredients must list
protein content, derived by a lab test. These lab tests
chemically isolate nitrogen, a major component of protein, then
mathematically calculate the protein percentage based upon the nitrogen
content. Thus, if you pump in the nitrogen and you
increase protein test levels, justify labeling ingredients as higher
protein, and charge a higher price.
This spotlight on food safety is revealing the dark underbelly of the global supply chains. The Associated Press reported in April the huge food safety problems with imported food:
Just 1.3 percent of imported fish, vegetables, fruit and other
foods are inspected _ yet those government inspections regularly reveal
food unfit for human consumption.
As
the U.S. progresses from a 1,200 food mile domestic supply chain to a
7,000 food mile international supply chain, we increase the carbon
footprint for eating, surrender America's world bread basket status, and
decrease our food safety system effectiveness. The globalized food trend is increasingly swimming upstream, meeting
realities that are hard to shake with a dismissive "protectionism"
accusation. I wrote last week about the "Gravity Well of Transportation Costs,"
the point being transportation costs should increasingly make global
supply chains too costly. Tesco, the major British retailer,
announced this little reported program in January:
Tesco said it planned to label food with details of its carbon
footprint, showing consumers the amount of carbon emitted during the
production, transport and consumption of each of the 70,000 different
products it sells.
These problems are not going away.
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