China grapples with food-safety probe

By Calum MacLeod

WUDI COUNTY, China — The headquarters of Binzhou Futian Bio-Technology are sealed, and local residents say its production sites were quiet last week.

The inactivity is government imposed, a physical sign of Chinese authorities' determination to tackle a food-safety crisis in which this nation's growing food industry is cast in a leading role.

On Thursday, after weeks of official denial, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed U.S. Food and Drug Administration charges that melamine, a chemical used in plastics and fertilizer, was found in rice protein concentrate exported by Binzhou Futian and in wheat gluten exported by Xuzhou Anying in Jiangsu Province.

Both ingredients were used in millions of bags and cans of pet food made in the USA, and some made its way into livestock feed. Product recalls include cat and dog foods sold under more than 100 brand names in the USA.

Chinese police closed the company's headquarters Wednesday, a day after the provincial quality supervision bureau sealed the premises by pasting paper strips across the doors of the eight ground-floor rooms that Binzhou Futian rents from the county grain bureau. Wudi County is in Shandong Province, a five-hour drive southeast of Beijing.

Binzhou Futian's headquarters are in a four-story building in a low-rise town of 440,000 people. They are modest accommodations for a firm that claimed, on its now-dormant website, to employ 457 people, have fixed assets of $6.5 million, and export 90% of its products, mostly corn- and rice-based protein and animal feed. They also highlight the challenge that China faces in regulating a food-processing industry, dominated by millions of small players, that now feeds the world.

"We are still a developing country, and we have a small-scale farm economy," said Wu Yongning, deputy director of the National Institute of Nutrition and Food Safety, under the Chinese Center for Disease Control in Beijing.

"In agricultural production, a single farm or family is often a foodstuffs factory or enterprise. This is a problem that other large economies don't have," Wu said.

Binzhou Futian is a classic example of a single Chinese entrepreneur pursuing his dream in a once-centrally planned economy that only recently opened its doors to private enterprise.

The founder, Tian Feng, who could not be reached for comment, built his firm by processing, thus adding value to the region's agricultural wealth.

In Wudi last week, the only people aware of any problem at Binzhou Futian were representatives from the two dozen local animal feed producers who were called Tuesday to an emergency government meeting.

"I am confident the government can deal with this problem," said Liu Jincheng, manager of Wudi Liuhe Xinyang Animal Feed Co., a branch of China's third-largest animal-feed maker.

"President Hu Jintao signed an order requiring strict handling of this matter. Officials asked us for details of all our raw material suppliers, but I don't fear their inspections, as all our materials come from large, standardized companies."

Binzhou Futian told its U.S. client Wilbur-Ellis that the contamination occurred through accidental reuse of dirty packaging, according to Wilbur-Ellis President John Thacher. The FDA has said the melamine, a chemical high in nitrogen, might have been added to the grain products to make them appear higher in protein than they were.

Luo Yunbo, head of the Food Science and Nutritional Engineering Institute at China's Agricultural University, said that some Chinese food manufacturers include additives that are inappropriate.

"Sometimes people lack enough knowledge of additives, or even if they do know, they still do it," he said. "The current penalties are very small and should be much heavier. Some companies are fined and then move somewhere else and do it again," he said.

Other experts agreed that China faces a stiff test to stamp out abuses.

"Farmers are always looking for profit, and sometimes they do not meet our national standards. Also, our safety inspection coverage is not yet complete," said Wu, of the food safety institute.

"Contamination can happen occasionally in both animal feed and foodstuffs. If you buy from a local agricultural market, and the goods are put in bags, then we have regulations for the safety of the bag, but does everyone meet those standards?" Wu asked.