Toxic ingredient found way to farmed-fish feed

WASHINGTON – The tainted Chinese ingredients incorporated into U.S. pet foods and later made their way into feed for chickens and pigs – and now farmed fish – were not wheat gluten and rice protein as advertised but were ordinary, and contaminated, wheat flour, government investigators said Tuesday.

Moreover, officials said, some of that contaminated flour, mislabeled as gluten, was mixed into fish food in Canada and exported to the United States, where it was fed to fish raised for human consumption.

That raises the prospect that some American seafood may be laced with melamine, the industrial toxin.

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.

Government scientists said they will conduct a risk analysis to determine whether eating fish that were fed tainted feed raises human health concerns. “We don’t believe there is any significant health risk from consuming this fish,” David Acheson, FDA’s assistant commissioner for food protection, said.

Channel catfish is the most prevalent U.S.-raised fish, and all 600 million pounds of it raised annually get only domestic ingredients, said Randy MacMillan, president of the National Aquaculture Association. Other top sellers include rainbow trout, tilapia and striped bass.

Separately, Acheson said tests had found that the tainted Chinese pet-food ingredients, which had entered the United States labeled as wheat gluten and rice protein concentrate, were in fact ordinary wheat flour.

Gluten is the high-protein constituent of flour that remains after starch has been removed. Investigators suspect that Chinese exporters boosted their profits by using cheap, unprocessed, low-protein flour and adding melamine, which gives false high-protein readings.