Pet Food Politics: a summary
On March 16, 2007, Menu Foods, a pet food manufacturer from Canada, issued a recall of more than 60 million cans and pouches across 200 brands of pet foods (Nestle, 2008, p.13).
Several rounds of testing revealed that the pet foods, which were supposed to contain wheat gluten (an expensive source of protein) imported from China, in fact contained wheat flour laced with melamine and cyanuric acid. As Nestle (2008) pointed out, feed officials still measure protein content by "the amount of nitrogen present" (p. 71), so melamine, used to make plastic dinnerware, and cyanuric acid, a by-product of this dinnerware-making process – both cheap, non-protein sources of nitrogen – were used to boost the foods’ apparent protein content.
Toxicology studies conducted by UC Davis, as well as earlier studies reported in agricultural journals, showed that melamine in combination with cyanuric acid in any dose (even below the level usually considered safe) forms crystals and disrupts normal kidney function in animals (Nestle, 2008, p.87). The Veterinary Information Network estimated that around 2000-7000 pets across the US died; thousands more fell sick (Nestle, 2008, p.58). Since salvaged pet food is routinely fed to farm animals, melamine also found its way into the human food supply and was detected in hogs, chickens, and farmed fish.
Nestle (2008) argues that "contaminated pet foods were early warnings of the safety hazards of globalisation" (p.2). The pet food recall of 2007 led China to institute new food safety standards. In the US, the recall fueled a backlash against imported foods, increased demand for better labeling, and consequently, stronger support for the locavore movement.
Perhaps most importantly, the incident highlighted that the fragmented food safety system of the US could not adequately protect the country’s food supply, and that the FDA, which at the time of the incident was not empowered to issue a mandatory recall of food products, no longer has the resources or the regulatory might to cope with the current industrialized, centralized food production system (Nestle, 2008, p.143).
Reference
Nestle, M. (2008). Pet Food Politics: The Chihuahua in the Coal Mine. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.