FOOD

With alternately tearful goodbyes and barely contained impatience, more than 100 South Floridians surrendered their exotic animals Saturday at a zoo event designed to give owners an alternative to simply turning them loose.

The canopied plastic tables at the Miami Metro Zoo became exhibits of their own as passers-by hoisted children and snapped pictures of the snakes, scorpions and turtles being handed over in laundry baskets, food storage containers and pillow cases.

Of the more than 150 pets handed over on "Exotic Pet Amnesty Day" by people who could no longer care for the beasts, all but six found new homes.

Among the more bizarre submissions were a rhino iguana, a spotted African servile cat and a Dortmund — a raccoon-looking mammal found in South America.

"This is garden-variety stuff," said exotic pet veterinarian Thomas Goldsmith, who examined the submissions. "This is Miami. People have sloths and leopards and God knows what else."

Miami resident Ray Padilla, 17, came with seven snakes — Burmese pythons and Colombian boas — each in a pillow case knotted at the opening. He started collecting them as pets when he was 5 and said, simply, "No more room," and, later, "Eh, new hobby."

Regulations on owning exotic pets have tightened in the past year and will continue to get stricter, said Scott Hardin, who works in the nonnative species division of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

Tighter restrictions usually mean more animals are released into the wild, which can be difficult for domesticated exotic animals and harm others, too. Burmese pythons eat the already rare Key Largo wood rat; parakeets cause power failures because they nest in transformers; and iguanas consume landscape vegetation.

A U.S. federal grand jury indicted two Chinese businesses, a U.S. company and their top executives in connection with tainted pet food, which killed and sickened up to thousands of pets last year, prosecutors said.

The businesses and executives are accused of playing a role in manufacturing and importing a tainted ingredient used to make the pet food.

A 26-felony count indictment on Wednesday named Xuzhou Annoying Biologic Technology Development Co., LTD (XAC), a Chinese processor of plant proteins, and its owner and manager, Mao Lanzhou, who is believed to reside in China.

Also named were Suzhou Textiles, Silk, Light Industrial Products, Arts and Crafts I/E Co. LTD (SSC), a Chinese export broker used by XAC to export products to the United States, and 58-year-old Chen Zen Hoe.

The businesses and their officials were charged with 13 felony counts of distributing adulterated food and 13 felony counts of distribution of misprinted food.

A separate but related 27-count indictment named Chemistry Inc., a La's Vegas, Nevada-based company, and its owners -- Sally Wing Miller, 41, a Chinese national, and her husband Stephen S. Miller.

A U.S. food importing company, its owners and two Chinese businesses were indicted today by a federal grand jury in Kansas for their roles in allegedly manufacturing and importing a tainted pet food ingredient that may have killed thousands of cats and dogs.

The U.S. company, called ChemNutra and run by husband and wife Stephen and Sally Miller, imported and distributed wheat gluten, a protein-rich ingredient commonly used in pet food. The gluten contained melamine, a poisonous chemical that is used to create plastics, cleaning products, countertops, glues, inks and fertilizers, the indictment states.