Firms Charged in the Case of Tainted Pet Food
As most of you probably remember, last year was scary for all pet owners. Over 60 million containers of cat and dog food was recalled due to contamination. Groundbreaking news was made yesterday when 3 firms were indicted by a grand jury on charges relating to their roles in the contamination.
The pet food was being recalled due to the addition of melamine – a chemical found in plastics and one that can cause kidney failure in animals. It was used in pet food to inflate the protein content of the food additives allowing the pet food companies to use cheaper ingredients.
One of the firms indicted is ChemNutra, Inc. The company imports Chinese food and ingredients for shipments across the United States. The owners husband and wife Stephen and Sally Miller were charged with 27 different counts – including evading mandatory inspections of the ingredients in China, misbranding food, and conspiring to defraud the companies that unknowingly bought the tainted ingredient. All charges against them (except the conspiracy count) are misdemeanors.
The other two companies are based in China and the grand jury returned a 26 count felony indictment to them. The companies and their top executives are accused of intending to defraud and mislead, and falsely labeling the wheat gluten to avoid export inspections. The names of the two companies involved are: Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Co. and Suzhou Textiles. If convicted on all counts the Chinese executives could face up to 78 years in prison. The Americans (Stephen and Sally Miller) could each face up to 31 years behind bars.
This has to help some pet owners deal with the tragedy that happened last year. Finally there may be justice for those involved and hopefully the people who had a hand in contaminating the pet food will get jail time. It is such a sad world that we live in these days – I don’t think the answer is to rely so much on countries half-way around the world for cheap products.
Also, I don’t think the pet food recall got as much attention as it deserved. Could you imagine if something similar happened to the human food supply? If our food somehow became contaminated? I have hope that these people will be brought to justice and the sentencing judge should order the criminals to hear pet owner’s stories every day they are in jail. For them to hear what people across this country went through and the pain they had to witness would be a wonderful thing for all the millions of victims. I will be keeping a close eye on the trial and what happens in the case, updates will be posted here as they become available!
For more information on the indictments, check out the following articles:
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Thanks for reading! As always your participation in comments and discussions are encouraged and greatly appreciated!!
February 8th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
I wonder how much tainted food a cat would have to eat to be effected by this. One of our kitties was diagnosed with kidney disease recently…