Feds searched Emporia plant
Staff and wire reports
Friday, April 27, 2007
Federal agents searched Emporia’s Menu Foods Midwest plant as part of an investigation into the widening recall of products made with ingredients contaminated by an industrial chemical, the company disclosed this morning.
Food and Drug Administration officials searched the Emporia plant and the Las Vegas offices of ChemNutra Inc., the supplier of one of two ingredients suspected in the contamination of millions of cans of recalled dog and cat food, officials of both Menu and ChemNutra confirmed.
Menu Foods also said the U.S. Attorney’s offices in Kansas and the western district of Missouri have targeted the company as part of misdemeanor investigations into whether it violated the federal Food, Drug & Cosmetic Act. The sale of adulterated or contaminated food is a misdemeanor. A Justice Department spokeswoman had no immediate comment.
“Menu Foods has been doing everything it can to cooperate with the FDA,” company chief executive officer Paul Henderson said in a statement to the AP. “Even before commencement of this investigation we have given the FDA full access to our plant and our records, have answered questions and provided documents to them any time they have asked.”
FDA spokeswoman Julie Zawisza would not confirm or deny that a search warrant was executed. “We have a strict policy of not discussing activities of our Office of Criminal Investigations,” she said.
ChemNutra said it had been informed the company could be held accountable because it imported the melamine-adulterated wheat gluten used in the tainted pet food even though the company had no knowledge that its Chinese supplier had introduced melamine into the product.
On Monday in Lyon County District Court, Menu Food Midwests sued ChemNutra for allegedly sending contaminated wheat gluten to the pet-food plant in Emporia. A number of pets died from kidney failure after eating pet food made with the gluten, leading Menu to recall more than 60 million containers of dog and cat food.
In the lawsuit, Menu Foods asks for a judgment “substantially in excess of $75,000.” It also asks that ChemNutra indemnify Menu against all costs associated with the recall and any lawsuits pressed against Menu as a result of the recall, along with any other damages the court chooses to assign.
“Menu Foods prides itself on providing customers with wet pet food products made with high quality ingredients,” the company’s attorneys stated in the court petition, filed Monday in Lyon County District Court. “In 2006, ChemNutra promised Menu Foods that it could supply one such high quality ingredient, wheat gluten to Menu Foods. ChemNutra breached its promise.”
ChemNutra maintains Menu Foods waited several weeks before notifying it about the problem. ChemNutra also says Menu Foods had other suppliers of wheat gluten.
Federal officials also are looking at contaminated rice concentrate used by other companies for livestock feed.
U.S. supplier, Wilbur-Ellis Co., last week recalled all lots of a rice protein concentrate imported from China that it said may have been contaminated by melamine, a substance used in making plastics. On Thursday, the FDA and U.S. Department of Agriculture said that animal feed made with the suspect rice protein may have been consumed by swine in eight states.
The agencies on Thursday issued a quarantine of suspected animals and said they would not be approved to enter the food supply. The suspected feed was purchased by pork producers in Kansas, California, North Carolina, New York, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah. California, North Carolina, New York and South Carolina have instituted state quarantines. Producers in Kansas, Oklahoma and Utah have agreed to hold the animals until further notice.
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