FDA Announces Millions of Chickens Contaminated with Melamine and Sold to Humans

The FDA and the US Department of Agriculture announced in a press conference on May 1 that as many as 3 million chickens were fed salvage pet food contaminated with melamine and then sold to processing plants to be rendered for human consumption.

Officials giving the press conference were Captain David Elder, USPHS,Director, Office of Enforcement;Office of Regulatory Affairs, FDA;David Acheson, MD,Chief Medical Officer;Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, FDA and Kenneth Petersen, DVM, MPH Assistant Administrator for Field Operations,Food Safety and Inspection Service, USDA.

During the press conference they announced that 2.5 to 3 million chickens have been fed the tainted pet food and already sold to the public. They speculated that hundreds of processing plants could have received tainted vegetable protein from China.

The FDA says they lack toxicity data on melamine but they said that at this time there are no plans to recall any poultry products. In the last few days they announced that even though their testing had found that thousands of hogs had tested positive for melamine and 45 people have eaten pork products tainted with melamine they have no plans to recall any pork products. When reporters asked the officials to name the the companies that may have unknowingly produced tainted products the officials refused to give any names, citing their ongoing investigation. While there have been no reports of serious human illness due to eating melamine tainted pork or poultry, the effects of melamine on humans are not known.

Reps. John D. Dingell, the Chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and Bart Stupak, Chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee today sent federal investigators to the West Coast to pursue numerous reports of more extensive melamine contamination of wheat and corn gluten, rice protein, and vegetable protein. Chinese factory workers have admitted to adding melamine to pet food ingredients shipped from their factories, saying it's common practice and has been done for years. Officials are investigating to find the source of the melamine poisoning crisis. This is the largest pet food contamination incident in recent history.

The FDA officials also increased their number of confirmed pet deaths due to pet food spiked with melamine. Previously the FDA acknowledge the deaths of only 16 pets due to the tainted food. Today they have updated that number to 4,150 confirmed or acknowledged pet deaths. Pet owners and veterinarians claim the number is much higher and the number of 'official' pet deaths is expected to grow as the FDA investigation continues.