China acts on food safety after pet poisonings

Strengthened inspections follow use of melamine in pet food.

Updated: 6:32 p.m. ET May 9, 2007

SHANGHAI - China vowed Wednesday to crack down on contaminated and sometimes deadly food and drugs after a string of sensational revelations about the safety of Chinese products.

The campaign followed an announcement that authorities had detained managers from two companies linked to contaminated pet food that killed dogs and cats in the United States and Canada.

State media, meanwhile, said the country’s disgraced former top drug regulator would go on trial this month on charges of taking bribes to approve untested medicine.

China has long suffered adverse publicity tied to its notoriously lax enforcement of food and drug safety, but the present round has been especially worrying.

China faces criticism from the United States and European Union for what they contend are unfair trade practices, and tainted food scandals could lead to bans on food products that would put hard-pressed Chinese farmers under even greater strain.

Already this year, Mississippi and Alabama have banned catfish from China after tests found ciprofloxacin and enrofloxacin, antibiotics banned for use in the United States. Louisiana officials said Monday they would begin testing Chinese seafood for the antibiotics.

154 brands recalled
China’s government body responsible for overseeing food safety said it had detained an unspecified number of managers from Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Co. Ltd. and Binzhou Futian Biology Technology Co. Ltd.

That came after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration cited the firms as the source of pet food ingredients tainted with melamine, a chemical used in plastics, fertilizers and flame retardants.

U.S. inspectors said the tainted gluten was used to make pet food and caused the deaths of an unknown number of dogs and cats, sparking a recall of 154 brands of pet food contaminated with the chemical.