In case you missed this news of the past few years, the melamine-poisoned milk from China that surfaced in Sept 2008 was prefaced a year and a half earlier in April 2007 by a massive recall of pet foods made by company Menu Foods due to melamine poisoning. Melamine is a chemical usually found in plastics that causes complete kidney shutdown in ( Read more... )

No information about which ones, but China's finding that a lot of their veterinary drugs are fakes.

And meanwhile the former head of the Chinese FDA equivalent is appealing his death sentence for corruption.

Thanks to rosefox for the links.

Zheng Xiaoyu, former director of China's State Food and Drug Administration, was sentenced to death for corruption on Tuesday. AP/Reuters/MSNBC
He was guilty of accepting more than $800,000 in bribes, his actions led to the deaths of thousands of US cats and dogs a full two years after he was fired, and dozens of human deaths from tainted ( Read more... )

FYI, a Texas lab has found lethal (to cats) doses of acetaminophen (Tylenol) in cat food. Apparently Hills Science Diet Sensitive Stomach is affected among others, but I don't know specific others. At the levels of acetaminophen measured, a cat eating a 100g can of contaminated cat food would have a 50/50 chance of dying w/in 4 days. ( Read more... )

I really had to go digging for this one. Poultry and fish that were previously suspected contaminated with melamine have been tested and declared free of taint and safe to eat. Pork has also been declared safe.

In the pet realm, Chenango Valley Pet Foods has recalled 8 pet food products, one of which is for ferrets - pass that on if you know any ( Read more... )

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/05/08/china.petfood/index.html

The guy in charge of the Chinese factory from whence the wheat gluten flour was sold to the US is claiming that he doesn't even know what melamine is. He's being held by Chinese ( Read more... )

Not only have 50 thousand pigs destined for human consumption been fed melamine-tainted feed, but I missed the announcement that 20 million poultry had, and now they're saying an unknown number of fish at fish farms and used to stock bodies of water, top it all off. The pork has been tested for melamine contamination but there are no results, the ( Read more... )

You may want to avoid pork for a while. It appears that some of the recalled cat and dog food tainted with melamine was fed to some 6,000 pigs. Some of these pigs were then sent to the slaughterhouse and the pork from around 345 former pigs then entered the human food supply ( Read more... )

Natural Balance cat and dog foods containing rice protein have been recalled. The specific items are "venison and brown rice canned and bagged dog foods and treats, and venison and green pea dry cat food." The rice protein tested positive for melamine, the ingredient suspected to have killed 16 (officially, thousands unofficially) cats and dogs ( Read more... )

Natural Balance's Venison & Brown Rice Dry Dog Food, Venison & Green Pea Dry Cat Food.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/17/pet.food.recall.ap/index.html