By DPA
Washington : Chinese and US company officials have been indicted on charges of selling a tainted ingredient for pet food that killed thousands of cats and dogs in the United States last year.
Two Chinese companies and Chemnutra Inc, headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada, were charged with exporting and distributing Chinese-made wheat gluten that was contaminated with melamine, an industrial chemical, and falsely labelled to avoid inspection in China, the US Justice Department said.
Revelations in spring 2007 that house pets were dying from tainted food touched off a scandal that fed into broader concern in the US about Chinese product safety standards and forced China to address the problem.
More than 4,000 US pets are estimated to have died, the Justice Department said.
Adding melamine made the gluten appear to have a higher protein level than it actually had, US prosecutors charged in two indictments approved by a federal grand jury in Kansas City, Missouri Wednesday.
Cited in the case were the heads of two Chinese companies – Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Co (XAC), a processor of plant proteins, and SSC Co, an export broker – and Chemnutra owners Sally Qing Miller, a Chinese national, and her American husband Stephen Miller.
According to the charges, XAC added melamine to the wheat gluten and SSC labelled it with the wrong product code to avoid inspection by Chinese authorities. The Millers sold the wheat gluten to US pet food makers.
The two Chinese company heads face US fraud charges, although both are believed to live in China. The Millers were charged with distributing dangerous, mislabelled food in the US.
Sally Miller, who has a degree in food chemistry from Hangzhou University, knew from the shipping documents that the gluten would not face mandatory inspection in China, but concealed this from Chemnutra’s customers, prosecutors alleged.