Chemnutra Owners Plead Guilty

KANSAS CITY, Mo.Matt J. Whitworth, Acting United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, announced Sally Qing Miller and her husband, Stephen S. Miller, along with their company, Chemnutra Inc., pleaded guilty in federal court today to distributing a tainted ingredient used to make pet food, which resulted in a nationwide recall of pet food and the death and serious illness of countless pets across the United States in 2007.

By pleading guilty, Chemnutra and the Millers admitted melamine was substituted wholly or in part for the protein requirement of the wheat-gluten so as to make it appear the wheat-gluten was better or of greater value than it was. They also admitted that the labeling of the wheat gluten was false and misleading because the wheat-gluten was represented to have a minimum protein level of 75 percent, when in fact it did not. The labeling was also false and misleading because melamine was not listed on the label as an ingredient.