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Pet food company manager detained

"Melamine is mainly used in the chemical industry, but it can also be used in making cakes."

-- Li Xuping, Henan Xinxiang Huaxing Chemical Co manager

The general manager of a Chinese company accused of selling contaminated wheat gluten to pet food suppliers in the US has been detained by Chinese authorities, said police officials and a person briefed on the investigation.

The manager, Mao Lijun (毛利君), head of the Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Co (徐州安營生物技術開發), is being held in Jiangsu Province, but a police spokesman in the area, Pei County, declined to say on what charges.

In a telephone interview a few weeks ago, Mao denied any knowledge of how melamine, an industrial chemical, had been mixed into pet food supplies sold under his company label earlier this year. He also insisted that his company had never exported any wheat gluten and that his products were sold only on the domestic market.

But regulators in the US identified Xuzhou Anying and another Chinese company in Shandong Province as the only sources of the contaminated ingredients that killed 16 dogs and cats, sickened thousands of others and led to one of the biggest pet food recalls in US history.

Unanswered

Telephone calls to the other Chinese supplier under suspicion, the Binzhou Futian Biology Technology Co (濱州富田生物科技), went unanswered.

The arrest of Mao may signal that the Chinese government is stepping up its own investigation into the scandal. It also seems to be trying to show a willingness to cooperate with investigators from the US.

Despite its denials of knowing anything about melamine contamination, Xuzhou appears to have sought to buy large supplies of melamine, even in the weeks after the pet food recall.

The company had posted more than a dozen advertisements on the Internet seeking supplies of melamine scrap, the impure waste of an industrial chemical that animal feed producers here often mix into the feed to artificially increase the reading of the protein.

Elevate levels

Chinese producers use this practice, local experts here say, to elevate the level of protein to make a higher grade feed, even though the melamine has no nutritional value.

On March 21, Xuzhou Anying had posted this message on an Internet trading site called EC21: "We urgently need a lot of melamine scrap."

Despite the ban on melamine in vegetable protein, chemical companies in China continue to say they sell melamine scrap to animal feed companies and even to food companies that make bakery items.

Additives

"Our chemical products are mostly used for additives, not for animal feed," said Li Xiuping, manager at the Henan Xinxiang Huaxing Chemical Co (河南新鄉華星化工) in Henan Province. "Melamine is mainly used in the chemical industry, but it can also be used in making cakes."
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