Importers of Melamine-Tainted Wheat Gluten to Plead Guilty

According to a news source, a Las Vegas-based company and its co-owners have agreed to plead guilty to charges that they imported from China melamine-tainted wheat gluten used to make the pet food that purportedly sickened and killed thousands of cats and dogs in the United States and Canada in 2007. More details about the criminal indictments appear in issue 247 of this Update. ChemNutra, Inc. and its co-owners, Stephen and Sally Miller, have apparently reached an agreement with federal prosecutors and will enter their pleas during a June 16, 2009, hearing. The export broker, a Chinese company, allegedly mislabeled 800 metric tons of wheat gluten to avoid inspection in China and did not properly declare the contaminated product when it was shipped to the United States for use in pet food.

ChemNutra took delivery of the wheat gluten in Kansas City and then sold it to various pet food manufacturers. While the indictments against the Millers did not allege that they knew the product was toxic, they were charged with knowing the product had been shipped to the United States under false pretenses and failing to notify their customers. The crimes charged, 26 misdemeanors and one felony count of wire fraud, carry the potential for hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines and significant prison terms in the aggregate. See The Associated Press, June 3, 2009.