Pet Food Contaminant Poses Little Risk to Humans: Report

Melamine was in surplus pet foods fed to hogs and chickens.

By E.J. Mundell and Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporters
Monday, May 7, 2007; 12:00 AM

Copyright © 2007 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved.

MONDAY, May 7 (HealthDay News) -- The meat from hogs and chickens that were fed melamine-tainted surplus pet food poses very little risk to human health, U.S. officials confirmed Monday.

Melamine is the industrial chemical responsible for the massive recall of more than 100 name brands of pet foods in the last two months, following reports of pet illnesses and deaths from liver failure. More than 3 million chickens and 345 hogs have since been identified as having consumed tainted pet food, and much of their meat was sold to the public nationwide, health officials say.

In a prepared statement released Monday, federal health officials said that, using the "most extreme risk assessment scenario," if all the solid food a person ate in one day was contaminated with melamine at the levels found in animals who ate the contaminated feed, the "potential exposure was about 2,500 times lower than the dose considered safe. In other words, it was well below any level of public health concern."

U.S. officials contend that companies in China added melamine, a compound often used to create fire-retardant products, to exported wheat gluten and rice protein, ingredients that were later used in pet food manufacture. The addition of melamine can falsely inflate the protein content in the foods.

The risk assessment report released Monday was conducted by scientists from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and the Food Safety and Inspection Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

The FDA and USDA are in the process of identifying a group of scientists who would be charged with reviewing the risk assessment findings, the statement said.

But on Monday, based on the risk assessment, U.S. officials lifted a quarantine placed Friday on almost 20 million chickens held from the market over concern about their feed, the Associated Press reported. The birds can now be slaughtered and sold to the public.