May 9, 2007
*
Another Chemical Emerges in Contaminated Pet Food Case*

By DAVID BARBOZA

SHANGHAI, May 8 — A second industrial chemical that American regulators
have identified as a pet food contaminant may have been intentionally
added to animal feed by producers seeking larger profits, according to
interviews Tuesday with chemical industry officials.

Three chemical makers said Chinese animal feed producers often came to
purchase cyanuric acid to blend into their feed because it was cheaper
and helped increase protein content. In the United States, cyanuric acid
is often used as a chemical stabilizer in swimming pools, though it is
not thought to be highly toxic on its own.

Up until now, American regulators had focused on a chemical called
melamine. Animal feed producers here have acknowledged recently that for
years they added melamine to animal feed to gain bigger profit margins.

But American regulators and scientists have also been aware for several
weeks that cyanuric acid may have played a role in causing sickness or
death in pets.

China said on Tuesday that it had found two companies guilty of
intentionally exporting pet food ingredients containing melamine to the
United States.

The country’s watchdog for quality control released a statement on its
Web site late Tuesday saying officials at the two companies were also
detained for their roles in shipping tainted goods that may have
contributed to one of the largest pet food recalls in American history.

“The two companies illegally added melamine” to wheat gluten and rice
protein, the government said, “in a bid to meet the contractual demand
for the amount of protein in the products.”

The revelations from chemical producers help address uncertainties about
the presence of cyanuric acid. For instance, it has not been clear
whether it is a derivative or a byproduct when melamine is broken down
in the animals, or whether the cyanuric acid was separately placed in
the feed.

In China, chemical producers say it is common knowledge in the chemical
and agriculture industry that for years feed producers in China have
quietly and secretly used cyanuric acid to cheat buyers of animal feed.

“Cyanuric acid scrap can be added to animal feed,” said Yu Luwei,
general manager of the Juancheng Ouya Chemical Company in Shandong
Province. “I sell it to fish meal manufacturers and fish farmers. It can
also be added to feed for other animals.”

Yang Fei, who works in the sales department of the Shouguang Weidong
Chemical Company in Shandong Province, echoed that view: “I’ve heard
that people add cyanuric acid and melamine to animal feed to boost the
protein level.”

The Food and Drug Administration in the United States said Tuesday that
farmed fish had been fed meal contaminated with melamine and other
contaminants but that the level was probably too low to harm anyone who
ate the fish. Moreover, the feed was mislabeled as wheat gluten, when in
fact it was wheat flour spiked with melamine and other nitrogen-rich
compounds to make it appear more protein-rich than it was, officials said.

Two of the Chinese chemical makers say that cyanuric acid is used
because it is even cheaper than melamine and high in nitrogen, enabling
feed producers to artificially increase protein readings which are often
measured by nitrogen levels of the feed. The chemical makers say they
also produce a chemical which is a combination of melamine and cyanuric
acid, and that feed producers have often sought to purchase scrap
material from this product.

Competition among animal feed producers here is intense. But the
practice of using cyanuric acid may now provide clues as to why the pet
food in the United States became poisonous.

Scientists had difficulty pinpointing the precise cause of the deaths,
for neither melamine nor cyanuric acid are thought to be particularly
toxic by themselves. But scientists studying the pet food deaths say the
combination of the two chemicals, mixed together with perhaps some other
related compounds, may have created a toxic punch that formed crystals
in the kidneys of pets and led to kidney failure.

“I’m convinced melamine can’t do it by itself,” said Richard Goldstein,
an assistant professor at the Cornell University College of Veterinary
Medicine. “I think it’s this melamine with other compounds that is toxic.”

On May 1, scientists at the University of Guelph in Canada said they had
made a chemical discovery that may explain the pet deaths.

In a laboratory, they found that melamine and cyanuric acid may react
with one another to form crystals that could impair kidney function. The
crystals they formed in the lab were similar to those discovered in
afflicted pets, they said.

In the United States, some contaminated pet food and protein meal
recently found its way into hog and chicken feed, which led the
government to ask farms to quarantine and slaughter some animals as
precaution.

But on Monday, a joint assessment by scientists working for the Food and
Drug Administration, the Agriculture Department and several other
federal agencies said there was a very low risk of danger to humans who
consume meat from animals that were accidentally fed melamine-tainted feed.

The scientists said the dilution was a major factor in lowering the
risk. The government also said that both chickens and hogs fed the
melamine-tainted feed appear to be healthy.

In pets that apparently consumed a higher concentration of melamine,
however, a result was often kidney failure.

The General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and
Quarantine in China said an investigation named two animal feed
companies previously under suspicion: the Xuzhou Anying Biologic
Technology Development Company and the Binzhou Futian Biology Technology
Company.

China essentially acknowledged Tuesday that the two companies had
cheated pet food companies by adding a fake protein to the feed to make
pet food suppliers think that they were purchasing higher-protein feed
when in fact they were getting lower-protein feed.

China also said that a nationwide survey did not uncover other companies
using melamine in feed products. Chemical producers of cyanuric acid,
however, say the practice for them may be different.

“The substance is nontoxic — it’s legal to add it to animal feed,” Mr.
Yu at Juancheng Ouya Chemical said of cyanuric acid. “The practice has
been around for many years. I often sell it to animal feed makers.”