All the recent talk about contaminated wheat gluten in pet foods from
Chinese sources has made me wonder: just where are protein supplements
made, anyway?  Are they made overseas, in China, like so many other
things these days??

If so, might they be subject to the same corner/cost-cutting which
seems to be behind the contaminated gluten?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/24/business/worldbusiness/24pets.html?_r=1&ref=as
ia&oref=slogin

EXCERPT

China's State Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and
Quarantine, which is responsible for overall food safety issues here,
declined to respond to questions sent to the agency Monday.

American regulators now believe the Chinese companies may have
intentionally added melamine to their feed ingredients to artificially
bolster the protein count in those supplies in order to meet
requirements.

A Chinese expert here said Monday that it was possible melamine could
have been used to bolster protein counts.

"If the melamine level is high, it must have been added
intentionally." Liu Laiting, a professor of animal sciences at the
Henan University of Technology. "The amine in melamine can boost the
protein level in tests, because it has chemical element N. It's also
likely to increase the adhesiveness of the gluten." Mr. Liu added that
melamine was hard to detect in ordinary tests.

Regulators have not made a definitive link between melamine and the
deaths of animals that consumed it. But melamine is not approved for
use in animal or human foods and therefore any use of it would be
illegal.