Second Pet Food Ingredient Contains Toxic Melamine

With the horrific news in recent weeks regarding pet food in North American, more worrying information about the scandal has come out today.

It is now suspected that another main pet food ingredient provided by producers in China was tampered with so that the company could increase the cost of the deliveries. It is thought that an industrial chemical was added to the food.

This report is coming from the Federal investigators that are looking into what caused dozens of pet food brands in North American to become contaminated and cause serious illness and death of many loved pets.

It is not yet known if the industrial chemical was put into the pet food ingredient by accident or on purpose, but the investigation is going to try its best to determine how it got there.

A senator for Illinois, Democrat Richard J. Durbin is working hard to oversee the pet food investigation. When speaking about the case he said, "It could have been intentional, not accidental. Economic fraud is a theory."

When attempting to uncover that cause of the pet food contamination, the US Food and Drug Administration found melamine. The substance was found in the systems of pets that had died as a result of eating the food. Melamine is a plastic component and it is to safe for this to be included in food. The investigators where able to find that source of the melamine came from a company in China. The first ingredient found to be contaminated was wheat gluten. Now rice proteins from China have been found to contain melamine.

The recent appearance of the chemical appearing in another pet food ingredient today has raised even more concerns and highlighted the fact that pet food is poorly regulated. The chief executive of the Human Society of the United States, Wayne Acelle has said, "This has exposed that the safety standards for pet foods are not in place in any significant way and the kind of drumbeat, day after day, of recalls has shaken consumers' confidence in the pet food industry's adherence to food safety standards."