Filler in Animal Feed Is Open Secret in China – David Barboza and Alexei Barrionuevo

The New York Times takes a closer look at the pet food scandal:

As American food safety regulators head to China to investigate how a chemical made from coal found its way into pet food that killed dogs and cats in the United States, workers in this heavily polluted northern city openly admit that the substance is routinely added to animal feed as a fake protein.

For years, producers of animal feed all over China have secretly supplemented their feed with the substance, called melamine, a cheap additive that looks like protein in tests, even though it does not provide any nutritional benefits, according to melamine scrap traders and agricultural workers here. [Full text]

- See also a comment on this article on the Huffington Post blog.