POISONED PET FOOD:

A QUICK MORNING UPDATE:

Just enough time for a quick morning update before Molly hits the road. An article in today's International Herald Tribune reports more about how the melamine got into the wheat gluten exported from China. Turns out that the Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development company failed to disclose to the Chinese government that it was shipping feedstuffs to the USA, thereby avoiding any inspection in China. Not that it would made much of a difference, however, for as the article points out the Chinese government only got around to banning melamine in vegetable protein last Friday April 27th after many weeks of complete denial. This is the latest in a long run of stories about the chaotic and slipshod Chinese food inspection process. Another article from the Monday edition of Forbes magazine quotes Ji Denghui, general manager of Fujian Sanming Dinghui Chemical Company, which manufacturers melamine, as saying,

"Many companies buy melamine scrap to make animal feed such as fish feed. 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, then there won't be any regulation."

Not that the American food inspection regime is a sterling example either. But more on that later. Molly has to go.