China Makes Arrests In Pet Food Case

China launched a campaign Wednesday to boost food and drug safety, following an announcement that authorities have detained managers from two companies linked to contaminated pet food that killed dogs and cats in North America.

State media, meanwhile, reported the country's disgraced former top drug regulator would go on trial this month on charges of taking bribes to approve untested medicine.

The ongoing revelations have shed a harsh light on China's notoriously lax enforcement of food and drug safety, sparking fears that exported products could contaminate food supplies abroad.

Food heading overseas will face tougher inspections, reports . One of the arrested managers reportedly shopped online for melamine, a chemical used in plastics, fertilizers and flame retardants.

Few details were given about the detentions, which follow a U.S. Food and Drug Administration investigation sparked by the pet deaths and a recall of nearly 100 brands of pet food made with the tainted ingredients.

The FDA discovered melamine in the pet food and traced the contaminated foodstuff to the Chinese companies.

In a notice on its Web site, China's government body responsible for overseeing food safety said police had opened cases against individuals at the two companies blamed for the melamine tainting — Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Co. Ltd. and Binzhou Futian Biology Technology Co. Ltd.

It said police had placed an unspecified number of individuals "under monitoring," but gave no other details.

"Relevant departments will deal strictly with the lawbreaking companies and those responsible according to the results of the investigation," the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said on its Web site.

Separately, the State Council, or Cabinet, said the nationwide crackdown would compel companies to adopt "standards used in food-importing countries ... and test products which will be used to make animal feed or food for humans."

The government must "strengthen its investigations into protein products, especially melamine," the notice said.

The government's actions come as China faces criticism from the U.S. and European Union for what they allege are unfair trade practices. For China, the tainted food scandal could reinforce those negative perceptions, inciting a backlash that could see Chinese food products banned, potentially crimping already hard-pressed Chinese farmers.

China's exports of seafood, food additives and other such products compete strongly on price but have been repeatedly singled out for contamination or low quality. For example, the U.S. states of Mississippi and Alabama recently banned catfish from China after tests found ciprofloxacin and enrofloxacin, antibiotics banned for use in the United States.

In another embarrassing disclosure, The New York Times reported recently that a Chinese company sold diethylene glycol, a chemical cousin of antifreeze, that ended up in medicine that killed at least 51 people in Panama.

The agency that sets regulator standards for food and drug safety has been in disarray for years. Its director, Zheng Xiaoyu, was dismissed in 2005 and has since been accused of taking up to 6 million yuan ($780,000) in bribes to approve untested medicines, including an antibiotic that killed at least 10 patients.

Zheng is scheduled to go on trial in mid-May, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

The quality inspection administration said Xuzhou Anying and Binzhou Futian were both listed as having exported melamine-spiked rice protein and wheat gluten to the United States.

U.S. inspectors said the tainted gluten was used to make pet food and caused the deaths of an unknown number of dogs and cats through liver failure.

Calls to office numbers at the companies rang unanswered on Wednesday. The mobile phones of managers at the companies were shut off.

Police at the local, city and provincial levels declined comment. A woman surnamed Cao at the Binzhou police in Shandong province said she could not comment because of the confidential nature of the case.

There were no listed telephone numbers for detention centers in the two areas.

The general administration statement said the companies had added melamine to the wheat gluten and rice protein in a bid to meet the contractual demand for the amount of protein in the products. It said doing so was against regulations.

However, the statement indicated the companies broke the law only when they mislabeled the exported products to avoid inspection.

The general administration said it ordered stepped-up inspections in the wake of its investigation, but that checks on 173 exporters in 11 provinces and cities had not turned up additional signs of melamine tainting after tests on 399 samples.

Additional checks for melamine were ordered on related products, such as processed meats and milk powder, but no contamination was found, it said.

The administration said it passed on those results to the FDA, officials from which were in China last week to meet government officials and visit companies. No details of the trip have been released, and it is not known if they are still in China.

"The U.S. side said it hoped for closer cooperation with the Chinese side in the area of boosting animal food safety," the notice said.

Melamine has no nutritional value but because it is nitrogen rich, it raises the nitrogen level of feed. That makes it appear to be higher in protein and, therefore, garnering a better price for the makers of feed for stock animals such as pigs, chickens, and fish, as well as companies that make prepared foods for household pets such as cats and dogs.

It is illegal to add melamine to food or animal feed in the U.S., although makers of the chemical and feed companies told The Associated Press last week the chemical was widely added to feed in China. They said they knew of no rules against the practice and were not aware that melamine could be harmful.

Xuzhou Anying managers have said they have no idea how the melamine got into the gluten, which they say was sourced from other firms and sold to a third company that exported it to the U.S.

However, suspicions were raised when the company was found to have posted an advertisement on the Web site of an online market in March seeking to buy melamine.

U.S. officials say they don't believe melamine to be harmful to humans, but say they have too little data to determine how it reacts with other substances.

American media reports have suggested the pet deaths might have been caused by melamine reacting with cyanuric acid, a similar chemical usually used to help keep swimming pools clean but which is permitted by the FDA as a feed additive in carefully limited amounts.

Sales managers at four Chinese chemical companies said they were unaware of cyanuric acid's use as a feed additive, although two others said they had heard of the practice but didn't know how widespread it was.

"As far as I know, it is seldom used in animal feed," said Chai Zhixian, a salesman with the Shanghai Experimental Reagent Co.