Mystery surrounds poison threat origin

The big unknown in the 1080 baby formula threat is, of course, who is behind it. Equally glaring, though, is the question of how someone managed to get their hands on the deadly raw ingredient used to make the poison.

Police on Tuesday said a ‘‘concentrated form of 1080’’ had been found in packages of milk powder that accompanied the anonymous letters sent to Federated Farmers and Fonterra.

That concentrated form, the white powder sodium fluoroacetate, is not 1080 as we know it: the green pellets scooped into buckets and dispersed by helicopter. It is the toxic ingredient used to make those pellets. It is imported from the United States, it is expensive and it is hard to get.

In New Zealand, the bulk of this powder is held by Animal Control Products (ACP), the state-owned manufacturer of 1080. It is not for sale.

‘‘If you came along and asked to buy the stuff we wouldn’t sell it to you,’’ ACP chief executive William McCook said.

‘‘It’s not a finished product. It’s just an ingredient.’’

This limits considerably how many people could possibly have the powder. While 1080 (the finished product) can be acquired by individuals if they have a controlled substance licence and proper approval, the pellet form of the poison they would get is 0.15 per cent of its original purity. At that dilution, it is almost impossible to refine back.

ACP ‘‘very, very rarely’’ supplies research organisations and laboratories with samples of the powder, McCook said. He could only recall one case in the last two years.

So is the company surprised someone was able to get the powder to make the threat?

‘‘The short answer is yes,’’ McCook said.

‘‘We’re at a bit of a loss, like everybody else, to think where possibly this product might have been sourced from.’’

Christchurch company Pest Control Research Ltd is attempting to enter the 1080 manufacturing market.

Director Malcolm Thomas agreed sodium fluoroacetate would be very hard to source but saw a loophole.

‘‘There may be some around the country that isn’t accounted for. It’s been used for the last 50 years [so] there could potentially be some sitting around. There might even be something from back in the 1960s sitting on someone’s shelf. Who knows? It has been in the country for a long time.’’

The Ministry for Primary Industries has introduced three contamination tests in the infant formula manufacturing process since the threat was received, to go with the four there already were.