The distributor of this product in Italy has confirmed to Feedinfo News Service that once they were alerted to the issue, they immediately withdrew the Bactoplus product from the feed supply chain and opened up lines of communication with the Italian authorities.
However, the Italian distributor Mazzoleni S.P.A. has expressed frustration that, on the contrary, communication with their Chinese producer has not been to their satisfaction. Mazzoleni insists that despite a series of phone calls, emails, face-to-face meetings and at least one trip to China made especially for the purpose of discussing this incident, they were never shown proof that Meihua was investigating the possibility that the contamination could have originated in their production processes. And indeed, Mazzoleni firmly believes that the contamination must have occurred at Meihua’s production facility. First, they explain that the laboratory tests carried out by the veterinary authorities which established the existence of this contamination were done using unopened bags1, and that at least two rounds of testing carried out on two different unopened samples detected the Bacillus cereus. Second, they have demonstrated that the contaminated lots travelled on three different transport vessels in 15 different containers, which would seem to rule out environmental contamination in the hands of the transporters. Third, the contamination found by the Italian tests consists of spores, a method of defense used by bacteria to resist environmental stress such as high temperature. Mazzoleni believes that such environmental stresses could only have occured at the production site in China, not in storage or transport. Mazzoleni remains particularly displeased that Meihua refused to come to Italy to carry out joint investigations on the samples in question.
At least two rounds of testing carried out on two different unopened samples detected this bacterial contamination.