December 2, 2025
How the Chinese poison pet food
By John Klar
In 2006-2007, Americans’ pet cats and dogs began dying mysteriously from kidney failure. The mystery was not long-lived: authorities quickly discerned the cause to be pet foods laced with a chemical called melamine, or some combination of chemicals that likely included melamine and cyanuric acid. This was a tragic way for animals to die. The FDA reported more than 10,000 complaints about sickened pets. Thousands of cats and dogs were killed by the tainted pet foods.
Melamine is an industrial chemical not generally accepted as a food ingredient, so how did it end up in U.S. pet foods? The problem traces to China, where surplus melamine (and cyanuric acid) became widely used as adulterants in feedstock and baby formula to mislead quality testing that measures protein content by assessing nitrogen levels. In the case of human baby formula, infants in China began dying of kidney failure, leading eventually to court trials and the public executions of two culprits found to have deliberately adulterated Chinese baby formula.
Americans import more and more ultra-processed foods from China every year, but its track record on product safety is hardly comforting. The contamination of U.S. pets likely stemmed from wheat gluten and rice protein used to manufacture popular brand-name pet foods, including Purina’s Alpo brand and products under the healthy-sounding brand name “Natural Balance.” Contaminated corn gluten was blamed for a similar scourge of pet mortalities in South Africa.
The globalized food system is susceptible to potential abuses for profit, such as the tainting of pet foods with industrial chemicals. The more telling and alarming part of the pet food story, though, is what the mainstream media didn’t much discuss: subsequent contamination of human foods.
I dug into this food trail years ago because, as a farmer and business advisor, I immediately suspected something else would go awry. I investigated the pathway to pigs, and sure enough, that’s where some of the rejected dog and cat food ended up -- corporations love to convert costly liabilities to salable assets! At least 6,000 pigs in six U.S. states were potentially fed melamine-tainted recalled pet foods. A poultry farm was also supplied with tainted pet food.
It appears that some of the tainted pigs entered the human food chain before the risk was discovered. One bizarre statement that pretty well sums up the U.S. human food supply ran like this:
“The California Department of Health Services is recommending that pigs in question not be consumed, but California State Public Health Officer Dr. Mark Horton considers the health risks minimal if the pork has already been eaten.”Translation: “You shouldn’t eat this pork, but if you already did, no worries.” Much like the government hides evidence of adverse childhood reactions to vaccines because they might cause parents to become “vaccine hesitant,” fears that U.S. pork might be tainted with kidney-destroying feed additives could upset the price of pork bellies on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
This is the common refrain (and moral hazard) in U.S. food systems -- cover up the risks so people keep buying and eating things they wouldn’t otherwise. This is what Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has repeatedly warned Americans about, complaining of “captured regulatory agencies” that serve their corporate masters rather than the American people who pay their salaries.
Recall in the movie Jaws that the town of Amity Island’s mayor downplays the risk of shark attacks because the news would destroy summer tourist traffic and undermine local businesses. That reflects what the modern American food supply looks like -- don’t tell people the risks of what they are munching on from their local fast-food drive-thru: it could hurt business!
If toxic pet food that kills dogs and cats is diverted to feed pigs and their meat is then fed to humans, what else is making its way through the increasingly industrialized international food system to Americans’ dinner plates?
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/12/how_the_chinese_poison_pet_food.html
