FDA: Millions of Chickens Fed Contaminated Pet Food

3 million broilers already consumed; officials say human health risk low.

By E.J. Mundell and Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporters
Wednesday, May 2, 2007; 12:00 AM

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TUESDAY, May 1 (HealthDay News) -- Up to 3 million broiler chickens were fed melamine-tainted pet food and then sold on the U.S. market beginning in early February, U.S. health officials said in a press conference held late Tuesday.

The contaminated pet product made its way into poultry feed at 38 Indiana farms, 30 of which produced broiler chickens destined for restaurants and supermarkets, said officials at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Approximately 2.5 million to 3 million chickens fed contaminated pet food have already been sold, Kenneth Peterson, assistant administrator for field operations at the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service, said during the teleconference. "That's out of a total of 9 billion broilers processed in the U.S. each year," he noted.

Experts from both agencies downplayed any potential threat to human health.

"We still have no evidence of harm to humans or to swine" from the use of the tainted pet product, said Dr. David Acheson, who began his tenure as the FDA's new assistant commissioner for food protection on Tuesday. Acheson said that the contaminated food constituted only about 5 percent of the total feed at the farms. "The risk to humans is small," he said.

Peterson added that some 100,000 breeder chickens are being held in quarantine at some of the Indiana farms. Those chickens have been quarantined and may be euthanized, the FDA and USDA said. The agencies also warned in a statement issued late Monday that "as the investigation continues, additional farms will likely be identified that received contaminated feed."

The announcement comes on the heels of similar discoveries at hog farms across the United States. The USDA first announced on Thursday that meat from 345 hogs suspected of eating the contaminated feed had entered the U.S. food supply. Some 6,000 hogs suspected of eating the contaminated product have since been quarantined and meat from these animals will be withheld from the food supply, both agencies said.