Thread: Warnings delayed in meat threat

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July 13, 2006

Warnings delayed in meat threat

Restaurants, state officials angered that feds slowed notice of illegally imported birds.

Paul Egan / The Detroit News

State officials on Wednesday began notifying county health officials about restaurants that may have received poultry contaminated with avian flu, about three weeks after first learning of the potential threat.

Federal Agriculture Department Officials, meanwhile, have known of the illegally imported poultry from China since early June. As local officials expressed annoyance they were not informed by the state of the threat sooner, state agriculture officials also expressed displeasure with their federal counterparts.

"This puts us seriously behind the curve," said Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson, whose officials only Wednesday received from the state a list of restaurants that may have received contaminated poultry.

Nobody knows for sure whether any of the poultry involved was contaminated with "bird flu," because federal officials destroyed product seized from the Asia Trading Co. on Maple Road in Troy, doing business as Tin's Way Trading, without first testing it for the disease, state officials said.

Federal officials were unavailable for comment. State officials stressed there is no evidence that anyone in Michigan has been exposed to avian flu.

The June 27 embargo of about 400 pounds of poultry and food product at the warehouse, followed by the July 6 seizure and destruction of about 1,600 pounds of poultry and other food is part of a broader federal investigation of illegal poultry shipments that apparently entered the U.S. through New Jersey or New York ports, said state veterinarian Dr. Steve Halstead.

Most poultry imports from China are banned because of concerns about avian flu, a virus carried by birds. It can infect humans through contact or consumption and can be fatal.

Officials stress that proper cooking of infected chicken kills the bird flu virus.

Oakland officials, which only received a list of Asia Trading customers on Wednesday afternoon, had already begun conducting inspections, Patterson said.

"We're still trying to determine the facts," he said. "We have an absolute right … to reassure the public that any potential threat has been dealt with."

Brad Deacon, emergency management coordinator for the state Agriculture Department, was quoted in a media report Tuesday as saying state officials had a list of about 300 Asia Trading customers and had already begun sending inspectors to each one.

But Deacon said Wednesday state officials had only received a partial customer list from the company and immediately forwarded it to county health officials.

"We asked for that list and asked again and asked again," Deacon said. "We have gotten some names, but not 300."

Company officials said the customer list was not computerized and could only be compiled by poring through large numbers of records, Deacon said.

The company president, listed on corporate records as Wei-Zhi Hou, is out of the country and apparently being sought in connection with potential charges by federal officials, state officials said. A manager provided the list of customers, said Katherine Fedder, director of the state Agriculture Department's food and dairy division.

State officials said they learned of the potential health risk on June 20, not from the federal government, which had been investigating since early June, but from the Genesee County Sheriff's Department, which had received a tip because the warehouse owner also owns a restaurant in Genesee.

"It's definitely a concern," Deacon said of the lack of notification. "We have expressed that concern at multiple levels with the USDA."

The feds have also not said why they destroyed the poultry without taking samples for testing, Deacon said. "Their concern is getting the material out of commerce."

Most of the food product involved would not appeal to mainstream palates and was marketed at specific immigrant communities, officials said.

The food seized included chicken entrails, the feet of various poultry, and fetal pigs, officials said.

Tim Moore, director of federal projects at the National Agricultural Biosecurity Center at Kansas State University, said immigrants often demand food from home, even if obtaining it conflicts with import bans.

Chinese restaurant owners contacted by The News said they had not been notified about the avian flu scare. They all said they obtained their poultry from other sources than the supplier in Troy.

"We're all concerned," said Susana Chang of China Cafe in Novi, who gets her poultry from suppliers in Detroit but wanted more information about what happened. "I like to be on top of it," she said.

Detroit News Staff Writer Mark Hicks contributed to this report. You can reach Paul Egan at (313) 222-2069 or pegan@detnews.com.

This is scarey. Seems they are always late informing the public on things they need to know.

Eating fetal pigs? ugh!