Is Melamine in our food in the U.S? United States
Filed under: China Product Safety, Dangerous Foods, U.S.A and Melamine Scare
By JAMES E. McWILLIAMS
Published: November 17, 2008
CHINA’S food supply appears to be awash in the industrial chemical melamine. Dangerous levels have been detected not only in milk and eggs, but also in chicken feed and wheat gluten, meaning that melamine is almost impossible to avoid in processed foods. Melamine in baby formula has killed at least four infants in China and sickened tens of thousands more.
In response, the United States has blasted lax Chinese regulations, while the Food and Drug Administration, in a rare move, announced last week that Chinese food products containing milk would be detained at the border until they were proved safe.
For all the outrage about Chinese melamine, what American consumers and government agencies have studiously failed to scrutinize is how much melamine has pervaded our own food system. In casting stones, we’ve forgotten that our own house has more than its share of exposed glass.
To be sure, in China some food manufacturers deliberately added melamine to products to increase profits. Makers of baby formula, for example, watered down their product, lowering the amount of protein and nutrients, then added melamine, which is cheap and fools tests measuring protein levels.
But melamine is also integral to the material life of any industrialized society. It’s a common ingredient in cleaning products, waterproof plywood, plastic compounds, cement, ink and fire-retardant paint. Chemical plants throughout the United States produce millions of pounds of melamine a year.
Given the pervasiveness of melamine, it’s always possible that trace elements will end up in food. The F.D.A. thus sets the legal limit for melamine in food at 2.5 parts per million. This amount is indeed minuscule, a couple of sand grains in an expanse of desert that pose no real threat to public health. Moreover, the 2.5 p.p.m. figure is calculated for a person weighing 132 pounds — a cautious benchmark given that the average adult weighs 150 to 180 pounds.
But these figures obscure more than they reveal. First, while adults eat about one-fortieth of their weight every day, toddlers consume closer to one-tenth. Although scientists haven’t measured the differential impact of melamine on infants versus adults, it’s likely that this intensified ratio would at least double (if not quadruple) the impact of legal levels of melamine on toddlers.
This doubled exposure might not land a child in the hospital, but it could certainly contribute to the long-term kidney and liver problems that we know are caused by chronic exposure to melamine.
On a more concrete note, melamine not only has widespread industrial applications, but is also used to buttress the foundation of American agriculture.
Fertilizer companies commonly add melamine to their products because it helps control the rate at which nitrogen seeps into soil, thereby allowing the farmer to get more nutrient bang for the fertilizer buck. But the government doesn’t regulate how much melamine is applied to the soil. This melamine accumulates as salt crystals in the ground, tainting the soil through which American food sucks up American nutrients.
A related area of agricultural concern is animal feed. Chinese eggs seized last month in Hong Kong, for instance, contained elevated levels of melamine because of the melamine-laden wheat gluten used in the feed for the chickens that produced the eggs.
To think American consumers are immune to this unscrupulous behavior is to ignore the Byzantine reality of the global gluten trade. Tracking the flow of wheat gluten around the world, much less evaluating its quality, is like trying to contain a drop of dye in a churning whirlpool.
More ominous, the United States imports most of its wheat gluten. Last year, for instance, the F.D.A. reported that millions of Americans had eaten chicken fattened on feed with melamine-tainted gluten imported from China. Around the same time, Tyson Foods slaughtered and processed hogs that had eaten melamine-contaminated feed. The government decided not to recall the meat.
Only a week earlier, however, the F.D.A. had announced that thousands of cats and dogs had died from melamine-laden pet food. This high-profile pet scandal did not prove to be a spur to reform so much as a red herring. Our attention was diverted to Fido and away from the animals we happen to kill and eat rather than spoil.
Frightening as this all sounds, the concerned consumer is not completely helpless. We can seek out organic foods, which are grown with fertilizer without melamine — unless that fertilizer was composted with manure from animals fed melamine-laden feed (always possible, as the Tyson example suggests).
We could further protect ourselves by choosing meat from grass-fed or truly free-range animals, assuming the grass was not fertilized with a conventional product (something that’s also very hard to know).
But as all the caveats above indicate, these precautions will only go so far. Melamine, after all, points to the much larger relationship between industrial waste and American food production. Regulations might be lax when it comes to animal feed and fertilizer in China, but take a closer look at similar regulations in the United States and it becomes clear that they’re vague enough to allow industries to “recycle” much of their waste into fertilizer and other products that form the basis of our domestic food supply.
As a result, toxic chemicals routinely enter our agricultural system through the back channels of this under-explored but insidious relationship.
So, sure, let’s keep the heat on China. And, yes, let’s take with a big dose of skepticism the Chinese government’s assurances that they’re improving the food supply.
At the same time, though, instead of delivering righteous condemnation, the United States should seize upon the melamine scandal as an opportunity to pass federal fertilizer standards backed by consistent testing for this compound, which could very well be hidden in plain sight.
James E. McWilliams, a history professor at Texas State University at San Marcos, is the author of “American Pests: The Losing War on Insects From Colonial Times to DDT.
Chickens killed due to melamine scare and concerns
China melamine scandal causes slaughter of thousands of chickens
Fri Oct 31, 2008 4:45pm IST
By Ian Ransom
BEIJING (Reuters) – Chinese farmers, hurt by a spreading melamine scandal, slaughtered tens of thousands of chickens, state media said on Friday, as authorities in Shanghai began checks on feed producers for local fisheries.
Shanghai’s Livestock Office would check more than 100 feed producers in the city, and promised tests for the city’s seafood products if any feed were found to contain melamine, the Shanghai Daily newspaper said on Friday.
Melamine is a compound used in making plastic chairs and other things, but is often added to food to cheat nutrition tests.
At least four children died and tens of thousands were made ill from drinking milk formula adulterated with melamine this year.
The melamine scandal has since spread to other dairy products, sweets and chocolate, prompting recalls of Chinese-made food around the world.
A rash of cases involving melamine-tainted eggs exported to Hong Kong and South Korea, and sold in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, have aroused fears of how prevalent the compound is in Chinese animal feed.
Melamine was banned in feed last year in the wake of a pet food scandal that was blamed for the deaths of dogs and cats in the United States last year, but has since been found in chicken feed used by major egg producers in northern China.
Public fears about food safety have seen egg prices plummet in local markets, and wholesalers refuse stock not carrying melamine inspection certificates.
Plunging demand in Beijing had prompted dozens of farmers in Baoding to slaughter tens of thousands of chickens in recent days, the Beijing Youth Daily said.
Amid the growing scandals, China's health ministry has urged officials to quickly fix the country's problem-ridden food safety system.
DISJOINTED
The World Health Organisation's food safety chief, Jorgen Schlundt, last week called China's food-safety system "disjointed" and said poor communications between ministries and agencies may have prolonged the outbreak of melamine poisoning.
"Coordinate and cooperate to investigate and punish major incidents," the official Xinhua news agency quoted Health Minister Chen Zhu as saying.
Some 2,390 children remain in hospital after suffering kidney stones and other complications from drinking melamine-tainted milk formula, the ministry reported on Wednesday.
At the peak in late September, up to 22,000 infants were in hospital on any one day after being found sick from melamine. ,
The overseas edition of the People's Daily, the official newspaper of China's ruling Communist Party, said the scare had exposed long-standing failings in food-safety regulation.
"The right to safe food and appropriate nutrition is every citizen's right, but one after another food-safety incident is challenging this right," it said in a commentary.
"For this reason, food safety has become a national topic."
(Additional reporting by Chris Buckley)
Animal Feed spiked with melamine, known secret for long time.
Animal feed spiked with melamine an ‘open secret’
in China: report
Last Updated: Thursday, October 30, 2008 | 9:06 AM
The Associated Press
A Chinese shopper pays cash for eggs at a market in Chengdu, southwest China, on Tuesday. (Color China Photo/Associated Press)
Melamine in feed in China
Animal feed producers in China commonly add the industrial chemical melamine to their products to make them appear higher in protein, state media reported Thursday, an indication that the scope of the country’s latest food safety scandal could extend beyond milk and eggs.
The practice of mixing melamine into animal feed is an “open secret” in the industry, the Nanfang Daily newspaper reported in an article that was republished on the websites of the official Xinhua News Agency and the Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily.
Publicizing such a problem is rare in the Chinese media and appears to be a tacit admission by China’s central government that melamine contamination is widespread.
The news comes after four brands of Chinese eggs were found to be contaminated with melamine, which agriculture officials have speculated came from adulterated feed given to hens. The discovery of the tainted eggs followed on the heels of a similar crisis involving compromised dairy products that sent tens of thousands of children to the hospital and was linked to the deaths of four infants.
That scandal was triggered by dairy suppliers who added melamine, a chemical used to make plastics and fertilizer, to watered-down milk in order to dupe quality control tests and make the product appear rich in protein.
Health experts say ingesting a small amount of melamine poses no danger, but in larger doses, it can cause kidney stones and lead to kidney failure.
It is forbidden to deliberately add melamine to food and animal feed, but its apparent prevalence highlights the inability of authorities to keep the food production process clean of toxins despite official vows to raise safety standards.
The Ministry of Agriculture and the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine did not immediately respond to faxed requests for comment. Phones rang unanswered at the Ministry of Health.
Chemical plants used to pay companies to treat and dispose of excess melamine, but about five years ago began selling it to manufacturers who repackaged it as “protein powder,” the Nanfang Daily report said, citing an unnamed chemical industry expert. Melamine is high in nitrogen, and most protein tests test for nitrogen levels.
The inexpensive powder was first used to give the impression of higher protein levels in aquatic feed, then later in feed for livestock and poultry, the report said.
“The effect far more exceeds the milk powder scandal,” the newspaper said.
Melamine found in 4 brands of eggs
In the past week, melamine has been discovered in at least four brands of Chinese eggs, and officials in China’s largest city, Shanghai, said they had begun checks on all eggs sold in local markets.
No one has been sickened and it was not immediately clear how many eggs have been recalled.
China’s leading egg processor, Dalian Hanwei Enterprise Group, was among the companies found to have tainted eggs, which were first identified by Hong Kong food safety regulators.
The reputation of Chinese products has in the past year come under fire after high levels of chemicals and additives were found in goods ranging from toothpaste to milk powder. In the milk scandal, Chinese authorities and a leading dairy producer delayed reporting the problem for months.
The Ministry of Health said Wednesday that 2,390 children remained hospitalized after drinking tainted milk, including one in serious condition, and 48,514 had been treated at hospitals and released.
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