Made in China: Can Inspectors Find Toxic Source?
CHETRY: And welcome. It is Wednesday, May 2nd. I'm Kiran Chetry in New York. And look who's here.</s>ROBERTS: Bingo. Here we go. Just the, you know, marvels of modern travel. You just on a plane, and the next thing you know, you're in New York City. I'm John Roberts. Good morning to you. Stories on our AM radar this morning. We're going to take you to China, where the pet food crisis started, and show you why there is growing concern that the food that America imports not just for pets, but for humans as well, could be a future risk to all of us.</s>CHETRY: And whether or not we're going to do something to change that in the walls of Congress. Also, a presidential candidate, Rudy Giuliani, taking a shot at Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.. Interesting, though, because Giuliani does have some ties to one of Chavez' companies. We're going to bring you the latest on that.</s>ROBERTS: And the hit show "American Idol" is becoming a teaching tool for bosses. What's that all about? Well, it's all about negative versus positive feedback.</s>CHETRY: Right. And Simon is the model.</s>ROBERTS: Should you tell an employee, "You're terrible. Get out"? Or should you encourage them to do better? We'll find out coming up later.</s>CHETRY: Right. Or should you tell an employee over and over again, "You're pitchy. You were a little pitchy, dog"? Because that's really what Randy says a lot of the time.</s>ROBERTS: I think the employee would look at you and say, "Are you nuts? What are you talking about?"</s>CHETRY: All right. Well, we want to let you know that if you have anything that you want to know about in the news, stories we cover, how we cover them, we want to hear from you. "Ask AM," e-mail us, send us your questions or suggestions, something maybe you want to know a little bit more about that we've covered, an update you want to know more about. AM@CNN.com. We're going to pick some of the e-mails, and we're going to be giving out -- we're going to be giving you the answers as we go along here on</s>AMERICAN MORNING. ROBERTS: Such as, "What does you're pitchy, dog" mean? President Bush used his veto pen for only the second time of his presidency to say no to troop withdrawal deadlines. Take a listen.</s>GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Members of the House and the Senate passed a bill that substitutes the opinions of politicians for the judgment of our military commanders. So a few minutes ago, I vetoed the bill.</s>SEN. HARRY REID (D-NV), MAJORITY LEADER: A veto means denying our troops the resources and the strategy that they need. After more than four years of a failed policy, it's time for Iraq to take responsibility for its own future.</s>ROBERTS: So how do the president and Congress move beyond this veto standoff? A.B. Stoddard is the associate of "The Hill" newspaper and joins us now from Washington. So, A.B., is there going to be a compromise here? What do you think?</s>A.B. STODDARD, ASSOCIATE EDITOR, "THE HILL": For months, actually, this has been such a partisan and divided debate on Iraq. But we're beginning to see the first signs now that Republicans support a compromise, so I do think it's likely.</s>ROBERTS: And what shape do you think the compromise would take?</s>STODDARD: I think that operations will be funded, but I think that there will be conditions.</s>ROBERTS: All right. The Democrats, they pushed this to the max, they got the veto that they were, I think, in some ways looking for from a political standpoint. But now, when they go into negotiations with the president, when thy go into this meeting 2:30 this afternoon, are they going in from a position of strength or weakness?</s>STODDARD: Weakness. Most observers and, of course, their supporters think that the Democrats have a plan B following the veto that they knew was coming, but they actually don't. They're hanging their hopes on this meeting today and future meetings. They hope to continue to build pressure on the president, hopefully with the help of Republicans. And, of course, the president continues to illustrate that he's not easily pressured.</s>ROBERTS: The Democrats really struggled to get unanimity on pushing this bill forward. They really had to rein in the liberal wing of the party. Now if the liberal wing gets this idea that, hey, our leaders are going to compromise, they're not going to put in timetables for withdrawal, they may just go with non-binding benchmarks, is that going to split the party?</s>STODDARD: Oh, for sure. The anti-war liberals had a terrible time supporting funding for a war they opposed, and that was with, of course, a withdrawal plan. It's now off the table. Meanwhile, conservative Democrats are not eager to drag these out with these short proposals for short-term spending bills or anything that can be construed as constraining troops in battle.</s>ROBERTS: So public opinion is running very heavily against the war. A recent CNN poll found about 66 percent of Americans against it, the majority of Americans are siding with the Democrats on this. How much longer can the Republican Party hold out against public opinion before they start to really feel the effects of that? I think we'll begin to see the significant defections from Republicans in the fall. They want now to find a way to express their opposition to an open-ended commitment in Iraq, but they also want to give the surge a chance to succeed. So I think we won't begin to see them joining the Democrats in earnest for a few more months.</s>ROBERTS: So, might, then, the Democrats pursue this idea of supporting the Murtha bill, which would fund the war for another two or three months, while they try and peel off more Republicans to their side of the fence?</s>STODDARD: It's on the table, but there's not a critical mass of support for that short-term plan today.</s>ROBERTS: Right. So, in the end, what do you think is going to happen in terms of funding and the surge? Will the president get the money he needs and will Petraeus get the time that he wants to see if this so-called surge is working?</s>STODDARD: Yes. I think it will be funded, as I said, probably with some conditions. General Petraeus reports on the surge in September, and depending on the outcome of that, after that it's a whole new ball game.</s>ROBERTS: All right. A.B., always good to see you. Thanks for coming in. Appreciate it.</s>STODDARD: Thanks, John.</s>CHETRY: This morning, Los Angeles police are fielding claims that their officers used excessive force to shut down an immigration rally. Our cameras were there. Take a look for yourself. Officers fired rubber bullets and teargas at protesters. They also whacked a few of them with batons. Several people went to the hospital. No one was seriously hurt. Police moved in after protesters started throwing rocks and bottles. The department is promising to take a second look at how its officers responded. Outside of Los Angeles, no major problems reported at any of the immigration rallies held across the country yesterday. The majority of people marched peacefully, and crowds were actually a lot smaller than they were last year. Organizers say a lot of illegal immigrants stayed home out of fear they may be arrested. The Food and Drug Administration warns that more farms across the country could be affected by animal feed tainted with the additive melamine. Tainted chicken feed was found on some farms in Indiana. The chickens that ate the feed did make it to the human food supply, but the FDA says the chickens did not get sick and that there is little risk to people who ate that chicken. Also this morning, U.S. food safety inspectors are in China trying to figure out how melamine wound up in pet food in the first place. CNN's John Vause joins us from Beijing with more on that. Hi, John.</s>JOHN VAUSE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Kiran. It's all about the melamine. FDA investigators are here in China, they want to find out not only how that melamine got into pet food. But perhaps more importantly, how widespread the problem may be.</s>VAUSE (voice over): When U.S. officials traced the chemical melamine to two factories in rural China, including this one, they initially thought both were isolated cases of melamine-contaminated wheat gluten which was used in pet food, and that led to a massive recall across the U.S. But a major melamine supplier in China has now told CNN, "Companies buy melamine all the time to make animal feed. It's a common practice."</s>CAROLINE SMITH DEWAAL, CENTER FOR SCIENCE IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST: They essentially added melamine to have it pass a protein test so they could sell it for more money.</s>VAUSE: Both factories are now closed and melamine is banned by the Chinese government as a food additive. But with China the third biggest exporter of food to the U.S., there's concern about how much of it is safe.</s>DEWAAL: There are a number of examples of food from China and food sold in China domestically that give us cause for concern.</s>VAUSE: Liu Weifang knows just how dangerous China's food can be. One of 300 million Chinese sickened by bad food every year. She ate snails infested with parasites, sending her to the hospital for more than a month. Even now, a year later, she needs daily injections. "When food comes to the table, I have to ask, 'Is it safe?'" she told me. Outbreaks of mass food poisonings are common here, often caused by poor hygiene or bad preparation, but also by criminals like this man, who was recently sentenced for making lard from sewage.</s>VAUSE: Now, officials here say that melamine is not highly toxic, even though it's usually used in the manufacture of plastic. Even so, Beijing is now trying to tighten their export inspections, and they're looking in particular for any food substance which may contain melamine -- Kiran.</s>CHETRY: So the bottom line is there's not really much regulation when it comes to China law on things like melamine, and they sort of operate by, if there's no accident, nothing goes wrong, we're not going to do anything about it?</s>VAUSE: That's pretty much how it works here. This is a big country. There are a lot of different agencies that enforce a lot of different regulations when it comes to food safety, and it's pretty lax.</s>CHETRY: John Vause reporting from Beijing on this story. Thanks so much.</s>ROBERTS: Coming up on AMERICAN MORNING, what happens when you buy high and then you find yourself living in a home that costs you more than it's worth? It's called being upside down. It's a position you don't want to be in, but it's a growing trend. And cheers to coffee lovers. There's more good news about your morning cup of Joe. You're watching AMERICAN MORNING. The most news in the morning is on CNN.