Committee on Energy and Commerce
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
Opening Statement of Paul K. Henderson
My name is
Paul Henderson, and I am the President and Chief Executive Officer of Menu
Foods. The Subcommittee invited me today
to discuss issues of food security and in particular the recent terrible
situation involving pet food manufactured with contaminated Chinese wheat
gluten supplied by ChemNutra Inc. to several pet food manufacturers, including
Menu Foods.
Let me
begin by noting that I am a pet owner, and many of our employees are pet
owners. My dog eats food manufactured by Menu Foods. I understand, and our
employees understand, the loss felt by pet owners as a result of pet food made
with contaminated ingredients. We deeply sympathize with these pet owners.
Who is Menu
Foods? Menu Foods has three manufacturing
plants in the
Menu is
recognized in the pet food industry as a quality manufacturer. This might seem a little odd in light of the
recent product recall, but as I sit here today, I can not think of a more
accurate description of my company.
How can I
say that? Well for starters, just look
at our customers. Particularly the
national brands for which we manufacture.
They are the market leaders and quality pet food is what they are all
about. Each had a choice as to who would
manufacture for them, and each turned to Menu.
In reality,
it wasn’t that easy. For many, we first
had to demonstrate an ability to manufacture at a level of quality at least as
good as their own. These branded pet
food companies sent their inspectors into our plants and satisfied themselves
as to our abilities and our quality.
Sometimes they identified a procedure that was standard within their
plants, and they required us to adopt the same procedure in order to secure
their business. By doing so, they
contributed to our own improvement efforts, with the result that today we are
one of the highest quality operations in the
But we
don’t stop there. All of our facilities are routinely audited by outside
experts. Many of our branded customers
conduct annual audits of the Menu plants that manufacture for them. In addition, we are inspected by:
·
The USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection
Service.
·
the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
·
the European Food Safety Inspection Service.
·
the American Institute of Baking
·
And Menu’s
In over 35
years of business, Menu had never had a food safety-related product recall
until the recent tragic events involving the contaminated wheat gluten.
A lot of
speculation has taken place concerning Menu Foods’ activities leading up to the
recall. Much of that speculation has
been inaccurate. We are pleased to
correct that record.
A detailed
time line is provided in my written remarks, so I will not repeat that
here. Instead, let me summarize the
situation by describing what it is and what it is not.
First, what it is not. It is not a situation caused by unclean facilities, poor manufacturing processes or similar problems. Our facilities are first-rate, our sanitation and manufacturing processes are state of the art. This is not a situation where lax inspection of Menu allowed a problem to occur. We have rigorous internal and external inspections. Inspections of our plants would not have prevented the melamine contamination of the wheat gluten.
This is
also not a case of reacting improperly to the situation facing us. We took appropriate actions based on the
information available at the time.
Let me put
this situation in context. In 2006, Menu
sold approximately 3.2 million containers of pet food per day. In contrast to this number, at the time we
decided to initiate the recall, we had a handful of reports from consumers,
three consumer reports passed along by a customer, and reports from a taste
testing facility. None of these
conclusively pointed to our food as the cause of the problems. At the same time, Menu had conducted tests
for all industry-recognized causes of renal failure, and these tests had
revealed no problems. In fact, it took
the FDA, prestigious research organizations and several commercial laboratories
several weeks of hard work to identify melamine in ChemNutra wheat gluten as
the source of the problem.
However, in
the face of the circumstantial evidence, we put the interests of pets and pet
owners first, and notified the FDA and began a voluntary, precautionary
recall. We also have cooperated in every
way we could with the FDA’s investigation and the efforts to identify the
source of the problem.
Now, let’s
consider what this is, or at least what it appears to us to be.
What this
appears to be is a case of deliberate contamination of wheat gluten in order to
pass off substandard product. Melamine
was previously unreported as a contaminant in wheat gluten. Melamine is high in nitrogen, which is
significant because the industry-standard test for protein content in wheat
gluten is based on the quantity of nitrogen.
Melamine would make the wheat gluten appear to have a higher protein
content than was actually the case. For
a seller who knows how industry testing methods work, this would allow them to
cheat the buyers. And, if it were not
for the previously unknown toxicity of melamine in cats and dogs, the scam
would have worked. It appears likely
that the public, Menu and other pet food manufacturers were the victims of a
fraud.
Menu has taken several steps to address the situation, including testing wheat gluten and other vegetable proteins for melamine, increasing our screening of new suppliers, and discontinuing all business with ChemNutra. We are also working with the Congress, the FDA, the Pet Food Institute and other interested parties in their investigations and in formulating additional measures to prevent similar occurrences in the future.