Officials: Hold the chickens and the hogs

Think you and your pets are safe now that pet food contaminated with Melamine has been recalled? Think again.

On May 7, U.S. officials representing the Agriculture Department, the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency placed a hold on 20 million chickens raised for market in several states to determine whether the chickens would pose a threat to human health if eaten. Hog farms in at least six states also were barred from sale.

Like the household animals that got sick from recalled pet food, chickens and hogs also were fed a mixture of pet food containing a potentially deadly industrial chemical.

U.S. Department of Agriculture spokesman Keith Williams said the 20 million chickens represented a tiny fraction of the 9 billion chickens raised annually in the United States. Larger manufacturers are unlikely to have exposed their animals to large amounts of the tainted pet products because they usually use special feed, he said. Nevertheless, meat from the questionable birds and pigs cannot go into commercial use without the USDA’s inspection seal, which was withheld until the risk assessment was completed.

In the end, the investigators concluded that “there is very low risk to human health from consuming meat from hogs and chickens known to have been fed animal feed supplemented with pet food scraps that contained melamine and melamine-related compounds.”

Yet “in spite of the passage of time and other major news events, the tainted pet food story is still with us, continuing to make front-page headlines … [pointing] to the need to ensure the FDA has the resources to make thorough, timely inspections … particularly as the number of imported food products surges,” stated Anne Keller for the “Focus on Agriculture” of the American Farm Bureau Federation.

As the FDA looks to improve the quality of food imports, the insurance industry also should ramp up resources to provide coverage for companies, too.

Whether a company is a grower, producer, distributor, retailer, restaurant or other wholesaler, if someone gets sick or dies, everyone has a potential to be named in a suit — whether there is a product recall or not, according to Marjorie Segale, vice president of Huntington Beach, Calif.-based Insurance Skills Center Inc. Segale recently taught a course on “E coli and Products Recall, contamination and Spoilage” at the Agribusiness Conference in Sacramento. Companies need coverage for reputational damage control, even if they are not at fault, she added.

Meanwhile, China has vowed to crack down on contaminated food and drugs. “Relevant departments will deal strictly with the lawbreaking companies and those responsible,” China’s General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said on its Web site.

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Patricia-Anne Tom contributed to this report.