China's Export Food Industry Grapples with Melamine

Filed in archive Venture Capital on May 9, 2007

What are you invested in? The recent pet food recall in the U.S. should make investors in China cringe as they contemplate the difference between standards in China and standards in more developed countries.

AsiaBizBlog recently published a story on the use of melamine, a coal-based derivative, in pet food. It is not clear at the moment whether the melamine in pet food was a contaminant or a filler - a substance used purposefully to make food either weigh more or take up more volume.

It is clear that the use of fillers in the Chinese food industry is common practice. And in the pet food in question the melamine was a component of wheat gluten - an ingredient that is also used as a filler in a variety of products for human consumption. So the question hanging in the air now is this: has melamine been introduced to the human diet? Food manufacturers in China who bring their products to the international market place will likely have that question following them for some time.

If China's overseas markets begin to question the safety of such products, the industry may suffer. (You can hear the AsiaBizBlog piece in audio format here.)