POISONED PET FOOD AND TAINTED TOOTHPASTE TOO:

In an ironic twist of fate today's Wall Street Journal reports that it is now the USA which is implicated in exporting melamine contaminated feed. The item in question is, mercifully, shrimp feed rather than pet food, but one wonders about the implications for the human food chain. The exporter is Zeigler Bros. Inc. of Gardners, Penn., and their supplier was Unicope Inc. of Johnstown, Colorado. This company has many US distributors and over a dozen international distributors. The original source of their contamination was Tembec BTLSR of Toledo, Ohio. This is a subsidiary of Tembec of Montreal and manufacturers binding ingredients for animal feed. A spokesman for Tembec said that the company had been using melamine since 2004 in their products but ceased after the news items on the pet food scandal this spring.

Thirteen countries received the contaminated shrimp feed including Panama, Venezuela, Belize, Suriname, Costa Rica, Honduras, Ecuador, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Gambia, Lebanon and Canada.