Chemical in pet food also fed to state hatchery fish

WASHINGTON — Farmed fish have been fed meal spiked with the same chemical that has been linked to the pet food recall, but the contamination was probably too low to harm anyone who ate the fish, federal officials said Tuesday. Some of the contaminated feed was tracked to six Washington state hatcheries, and was immediately pulled from use.

The Canadian-made meal included what was purported to be wheat gluten, a protein source, imported from China. However, the material was actually wheat flour spiked by the chemical melamine and related, nitrogen-rich compounds to make it appear more protein rich than it was, officials said.

After pigs and chickens, the farmed fish mark the third food animal given contaminated feed. The level of contamination is expected to be too low to pose any danger to human health, said Dr. David Acheson, the FDA's assistant commissioner for food protection.

It wasn't immediately clear if any of the farmed fish entered the food supply.

Much of the farmed fish in Northwest stores is Atlantic salmon, and many stores have increased labeling to differentiate farmed versus wild-caught salmon.

"We make sure our customer is fully aware that a fish is a farmed product, or that it is wild fish,"said Michael Batton, a head chef at the QFC-Harvard Market in Seattle.

News reports on Tuesday identified two Canadian companies — Westaqua Commodity Group and Skretting — that distributed fish feed spiked with the melamine. Both of those companies distribute feed to salmon farms as well as trout and other types of fish farms.

Skretting said in a statement that it has recalled a batch of its fish feed shipped to the United States after FDA testing found a very low level of melamine, and had received no complaints of ill effects for fish.

Skettering is a subsidary of Nutreco, a multinational company based in The Netherlands that is involved in animal feeds and fish feeds, as well as fish farming.

The food used at Washington state hatcheries was a starter feed consumed by fall chinook salmon, steelhead, rainbow trout, brown trout and possibly chum salmon. There were no reports of any abnormal number of deaths among the several million fish estimated to have consumed this feed, according to John Kerwin, hatchery division manager for the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Kerwin said the starter mix is fed to the young fish only for a few weeks at a time before they move on to other feeds.

Kerwin said that the state operates 80 hatcheries. Of the six that received contaminated feed, two were located on Hood Canal, three in the Lower Columbia and one on the Snake River.

The hatchery fish are released into state waterways to enhance sport fish — and in some instances — to contribute to commercial harvests.

Washington state also has commercial salmon farms operated by American Gold Seafoods. In a Tuesday evening interview, company official Kevin Bright said that none farms had any of the contaminated feed. Some of the contaminated feed made it to Oregon, where it was is distributed to hatcheries that raise salmon and other species that are released into rivers, streams and other bodies of water. Last week, an Oregon hatchery was informed that feed from Skretting was contaminated with melamine, said Oregon Fish and Wildlife spokesman Rick Hargrave. No ill effects were seen in any of the 870,000 spring chinook produced for the Willamette River system with feed contaminated with melamine, according to Oregon officials.

The Skretting feed was shipped to six other Oregon hatcheries. The feed at those hatcheries has not been tested yet to see if it was contaminated, Hargrave said.

In recent years, farmed fish industry has come under increased scrutiny for the presence of trace contaminants in the feed, as well as cultivation practices that include the use of feed additives to color the flesh red. Farmed fish typically are sold for direct consumption or for stocking lakes and streams.

Melamine, a chemical found in plastics and pesticides and not approved for use in pet or human food in the U.S., contaminated pet food that either sickened or killed dogs and cats. Since March 16, more than 100 brands of pet food have been recalled because they were contaminated with melamine.About 8,500 complaints of related pet deaths had been reported to the FDA as of May 3, but the agency said that only 16 deaths of cats and dogs have been confirmed.

Federal health and food officials have said some 20 million chickens and thousands of hogs also were fed feed contaminated by melamine. As with the fish, they said the risk to human health is very low.

U.S. investigators also have learned that the purported Chinese wheat gluten and a second ingredient, rice protein concentrate, were actually simple wheat flour.

Gluten is the high-protein constituent of flour that remains after starch has been removed. Investigators suspect that Chinese exporters boosted their profits by using cheap, unprocessed, low-protein flour and adding melamine, which gives false high-protein readings.. The supposed wheat gluten was exported directly from China to Canada in a deal brokered by a U.S. company, ChemNutra Inc., Acheson said. ChemNutra also supplied the ingredient to a Canadian dog and cat food company, Menu Foods, that's since recalled dozens of brands.

Steve Stern, a ChemNutra spokesman, said the Las Vegas company actually only cobrokered the deal to supply wheat gluten to the fish meal producer: "We never owned it, we never sold it."

Edmund Collins, president of Diversified Ingredients Inc., later said it was his St. Louis company that handled the deal, with Westaqua receiving the wheat gluten directly from China last July and August.

Seattle Times staff reporters Hal Bernton and Brian Alexander contributed to this report, which includes material from The Washington Post, The Associated Press, Reuters and USA Today.