United States v. Miller

ChemNutra, Inc. (defendant) was a Nevada-based company that imported food and food products from China to the United States. ChemNutra was owned by Sally and Stephen Miller (defendants). The Millers caused ChemNutra to enter into contracts with pet-food manufacturers in the United States to supply the manufacturers with food-grade wheat gluten that had a minimum protein content of 75 percent. The Millers then caused ChemNutra to enter contracts with a Chinese exporter to purchase the wheat gluten that ChemNutra intended to sell to the pet-food manufacturers. The Chinese exporter contracted with a Chinese manufacturing company to supply the wheat gluten the exporter would sell to ChemNutra. Between late 2006 and early 2007, the Chinese exporter sent more than 800 metric tons of wheat gluten to ChemNutra. Although wheat gluten was on the Chinese government’s list of food products subject to mandatory inspection before leaving China, the Chinese exporter used an inaccurate product code for the wheat gluten and thus falsely declared to the Chinese government that the product was not subject to inspection. Once the wheat gluten arrived in the United States, ChemNutra sold the wheat gluten to the United States pet-food manufacturers. The manufacturers then used the wheat gluten in the pet food. However, the wheat gluten contained melamine, which the Chinese manufacturer had added to the wheat gluten to fraudulently inflate the gluten’s protein content. Melamine was not approved as a food additive in the United States. Over 3,000 cats and dogs in the United States died or became seriously ill after eating the pet food made with the melamine-laced wheat gluten. The United States government charged the Millers and ChemNutra with distributing adulterated food and distributing misbranded food in violation of federal law.