Your Vancouver Sun

Pet food scare hits fish farms as B.C. firm recalls feed
Chinese ingredient used in manufacture
KELLY SINOSKI, Vancouver Sun
Published: Wednesday, May 09, 2007

A Vancouver-based company is recalling a batch of fish-farm feed after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it had discovered the feed had been spiked with melamine, the same toxin linked to the pet food recall.
Skretting Canada, a major producer of salmon and trout feed, said in a new release Tuesday that it hadn't received any complaints related to "unusual fish health issues," but was voluntarily recalling all feed related to the shipment.
A second Vancouver-area fish meal producer, Westaqua Commodity Group Ltd., is also believed to be linked to the contamination, but wouldn't comment Tuesday.
The fish feed, shipped to aquaculture farms in Canada and the U.S., included what was purported to be wheat gluten, a protein source imported from China.
It was instead wheat flour laced with the chemical melamine and nitrogen-rich compounds to make it appear more protein-rich than it was.
Investigators suspect that Chinese exporters boosted their profits by using cheap, low-protein flour and adding melamine, which gives false high-protein readings.
The gluten was exported to Canadian manufacturers last summer through a U.S. broker and used to manufacture food for farmed fish.
B.C. deputy provincial health officer Dr. Eric Young said consumers should not be worried about eating farmed fish, which are the third animal group, after pigs and chickens, to be fed contaminated feed.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has reported the chemical levels are extremely low, and Health Canada ruled the chemical does not accumulate in fish tissues and it's not believed to pose a risk to human health. No restrictions have been placed on farmed fish.
The B.C. Salmon Farmers Association urged consumers to continue eating fish, saying in a statement that "farmed salmon are completely safe for consumers and that the risk for exposure to contaminants that may be in salmon feed ingredients is low."
It's not clear how many Canadian fish farms received the contaminated feed.
David Acheson, the Food and Drug Administration's assistant commissioner for food protection, said he is also optimistic the risks of eating farmed fish will be minimal, even though contaminated ingredients may have made up a greater percentage of the fish feed than of the chicken feed.
Farmed fish typically are sold for direct consumption or for stocking lakes and streams.
"We don't believe there is any significant health risk from consuming this fish," Acheson said.
Skretting said it will continue working with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and FDA, and will give customers replacement feed.
Westaqua president Kelly Mills said he wasn't yet prepared to comment on the issue Tuesday.
But Associated Press reported Tuesday that the head of a St. Louis company said it brokered a deal to import nearly 353,000 pounds of the Chinese wheat gluten, which went directly to Westaqua.
FDA officials said they do not yet know how many U.S. fish farms may have used the tainted feed or what kind of fish may be affected. Some of the fish may have been sold to grocery stories and restaurants, and others may have been raised to stock lakes and rivers for fishermen, they said.
Fish farming is a $1 billion industry in the United States. Most domestically raised fish are fed ingredients sourced in the United States, said Randy MacMillan, president of the National Aquaculture Association in Charles Town, W.Va.
Melamine, a chemical found in plastics and pesticides, was found in pet food, which is linked to the deaths of 16 cats and dogs in B.C.
The latest recall has revealed the many ways in which the food chains for pets, farm animals and humans are internationally intertwined.
"It shows the degree to which, with the globalization of agriculture, things that go wrong in one country can affect many of us who never thought we'd be touched," said Rebecca Goldburg, a biologist with Environmental Defense, an advocacy group in New York.
"Americans now need passports to travel just about anywhere, including Canada," she said. "It appears that food and even animal feed traveling from country to country should receive similar scrutiny."
A growing number of U.S. lawmakers are demanding a better system for tracking the sources of food and ingredients, their biochemical composition and their safety.
"Our food-safety system is broken," said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., who chairs the subcommittee that funds the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture. She has called for the creation of an independent food safety agency that would consolidate tasks now handled by a dozen or so agencies.
U.S. government scientists said they will conduct a risk analysis to determine whether eating fish that were fed tainted feed raises human health concerns. A similar analysis completed last weekend concluded that chickens fed small amounts of contaminated pet food were safe for human consumption.
With files from Rick Weiss, Washington Post

© Vancouver Sun 2007