Yikes.

Yeah, I've been quietly freaking out about this for a little while now. As a vegan, food scares don't normally affect me, but gluten? That's the basis for most of the faux meat products out there! Yikes indeed.

Over-reaction.

And why have we not banned these things from China? They banned beef from the US over ONE single individual cow with Mad Cow. They are trying to poison us and the FDA doesn't care.

Yeah, color me completely unsurprised. "Fast Food Nation" and the like got many people in a tiff about the state of American food production ... but Chinese indistry? Total anarchy, not unlike American manufacturing at the turn of the 20th century, back when poisonous additives and human thumbs in meat were standard. I've started to steer clear of canned goods saying "Product of China".

Flying to China on Sunday and promise to personally investigate this melamine business. Granted, I work in printing, not dog food, but we have to safety test the balls out of every kind of ink, glue, and paper involved in anything we import to the US or Europe because manufacturers are as bad as they can get away with for the most part in terms of safety compliance and would probably print Clifford the Big Red Dog out of poison if it would save them half a penny per book. Actually, I think they do print books using poison; all claims to the contrary are lip service to help us sleep better at night.

All the mantis shrimp and $15 ladyboy prostitutes you can handle, though.

Is this the same melamine in retro plastic dishes???

vintage shopper @ #7: nope.

#4 Because most of the U.S. Debt was borrowed from China.

For anyone with a cursory knowledge of Chinese history, ghastly practices such as doping food with coal byproducts shouldn't be a surprise. The Great Leap Forward was the largest man-made famine in history. For the more contemporary minded, remember the fake infant formula that killed dozens of children in China?

For those curious, you can read the Hazardous Substances Data Bank entry on Melamine (search for 108-78-1.)

Gotta love the panicked governmental responses. "No *known* harm to humans." As if the intentional doping of food-products with a known toxin (a compound that disturbs kidney function and degrades into cyanide upon heating) is a perfectly acceptable situation -- provided there is not yet a known harm.

Is there a better summation of the concequences of US trade policy towards China since 1989? Slowly poisoned by unscrupulous greed and vapid optimism in about equal measures.

I agree with Transit Man.

If we've been eating this shit for years, how did it only just now make its way into pet food?

Yes, it's reassuring to note that the reaction to finding out there's coal by-products in our food is "well, we don't have any evidence it's harmful" instead of "THERE'S COAL BY-PRODUCTS IN OUR FOOD!!!"

Remember the USDA is the only government regulatory agency that is specifically charged with protecting INDUSTRY, not consumers.

And, Democratic candidates, please note: this is a golden delicious campaign issue in a dozen different ways.

And yet, somehow... I'm still alive. And so are all of you.

Beef. It's what's for dinner.

Um... to those dismissing the significance of this, the point is not whether you're alive, but whether the interaction between melamine and cyanuric acid may be slowly (and asymptomatically) damaging your kidneys.

At last Thursday's media teleconference, we were told:

"There's no tolerance for any of these compounds, either melamine or cyanuric acid. [...] We just don’t know when we get these mixtures together. So there is no, really no acceptable level."

And yet, once tainted meat gets to market, USDA and FDA tell us they won't recall it because there is no known risk. Yeah... there won't be any known risk until we perform pathology on some kidneys and find the same melamine/cyanuric acid crystals they found in dogs and cats.

I had my kidney transplant 11 months ago today. I guess I shouldn't have bothered.

Okay, Goldy, should we just sit here and starve to death?

Gomez @ 17 - should we just sit here and starve to death? That's what you take from this? Have you thought about...maybe taking some personal action? Maybe there's a point to be taken from Goldy's example of writing obsessively about this.

We can't all be grossly underfunded bloggers with time to call the FDA twice a day, so...how about call your freaking Senators? Write some letters? Really, there are more options than just "Die from bad food or starve to death".

The best way to minimize exposure to this is to avoid pre-packaged convenience foods that tend to have a lot of wheat, corn, rice, and soy additives. Eat food grown locally with organic-style processes (not necessarily certified). Completely grass-fed beef, chicken, and pork is available at several CSAs in King County. Wild fish is safe from these additives. Fresh vegetables are also safe.

Just avoid fast food, frozen meals, and crap like that. It's expensive and crappy anyway.

You don't have to do this with everything you eat, but the more of this you do, the less your exposure.

Actually, is there conclusive evidence that melamine stores itself in the flesh or fat of animals that eat it? If not, then what's the problem with eating animals that have eaten tainted feed?

Fnarf,
Um, there are lots of coal by-products in your food. All the time. In almost everything you eat. Hell, when you grill something, you're intentionally turning your food *into* coal. Of course, your point about the uselessness of the USDA is spot on.
We need to do a lot to improve food safety. But the E. Coli thing is about a billion times more dangerous than this melamine thing. At least as far as humans are concerned.

I never thought there'd be a context where chocolate assholes would be appetizing. I thought wrong.

Grab a package of food off your shelf and look at the nutritional label. See the protein line? The amount of protein is determined using a nitrogen chemistry based test. Melamine, while providing no nutrition, fakes out this test and appears as protein.

The melamine isn't there as a contaminant or by-product of processing. It was intentionally added to fake out the test for the amount of protein in food, boosting prices for what is essentially crap. Even if eating melamine is perfectly innocuous, its presence in the food supply is a heinous breach of honesty and quality. Way worse than, say, feeding someone a burger made out of ground rats rather than cow. You might as well be eating sawdust. Go check out that fake infant formula link I placed above. It's the same gist, the same sort of callous and cynical cheat in a different form.

And while many of you point out "we're still alive" and there is no evidence for melamine being concentrated in the food chain or causing definitive harm to humans, it is worth noting that there have been very few (or no) studies of these questions, mostly dating to the mid 1970's. A lack of evidence doesn't mean a lack of a problem, especially if one hasn't bothered to look for evidence. The pet carcasses and the presence of melamine in animals we've all been fed give me enough evidence to pause and be concerned.

18. We still have to eat in the meantime, wiseass.

I've posted some similar comments over at cornichon.org and I'll do the same here just so we can be clear about some points on this issue of our doped up food chain. Much of the finger-pointing seems to be at "those damn capitalistic Chinese" and as I happily pointed out, the key word is "capitalistic." Keep in mind that adding something - anything - to a product costs money. In other words, it comes off your bottom line. The melamine was added to the food stuff in order to boost nitrogen levels and allow the stuff to meet or exceed nutritional standards as set by our very own FDA. If the Chinese weren't given clear directions to do so, trust me when I tell you they wouldn't be bothered to spend the extra expense. THAT'S capitalism.

What we all probably should be looking at are the regulations and guidelines that the FDA has apparently been following all these years without any real problems or attention until now. For all we know, many of these so-called acceptable practices may well have originated in the last century as our food industries came under the control of monopolists such as the Cargills. What is now unfolding before our eyes might be unintended consequences coming home to roost.

Yipes!

This kind of thing really pisses me off. I try to eat relatively healthy. I read labels. I try to avoid the worst of the junk food. But I can still be poisoned slowly by malamine without even knowing it.

Super.

Keshmeshi @20,

Actually, is there conclusive evidence that melamine stores itself in the flesh or fat of animals that eat it? If not, then what's the problem with eating animals that have eaten tainted feed?

Is there any evidence that it is not? The FDA/USDA folks were asked about this on Thursday, and they said that they were in the process of developing tests to measure melamine in muscle tissue.

In the meanwhile, we know it causes kidney damage in dogs and cats. So why shouldn't we be cautious?

As an addendum, even if we write to congresspeople et al, given the glacial pace of lawmaking and economy, there isn't anything we can do directly and those who have the power to do so cannot and will not be able to do so for months, probably years.

In the meanwhile, right now, we still have to eat, and by Goldy's definition, everything we eat is tainted somehow with melanine.

How do you suggest we subsist in the meantime, alarmist wonder?

Gomez, of course, some of the editorializing in the post was hyperbolic for dramatic effect, but the facts as stated are all documented.

If your concern is melamine, of course there is plenty of food that is safe to eat. Fruits, vegetables, whole grains and unprocessed foods, wild seafood, grassfed beef, and perhaps organic chicken and pork. As long as you avoid these processed vegetable proteins, processed foods made from them, and industrial produced livestock, you're probably safe.

But the melamine scandal raises broader issues about the safety of our food supply, and that is why I have always seen this is a much larger story than just some bad pet food. We simply do not have the controls in place to protect consumers from mass adulteration like this.

I see. Fair enough.

If you had to take an educated guess, how long do you think this has been going on?

I would love to hear how the FDA is protecting us from this kind of leeched contamination in the food system.

I would certainly not buy ANY food made in China after hearing about these unscrupulous practices.

Additionally, when one thinks of the amount of pets that have died because of this it is outrageous. TOTALLY underreported by the authorities.... the vet in our neighborhood said that in their branch alone 50 animals had died...

Sadly #4 and #9 are probably on the mark... we are virtually owned by China these days (with those foreign debt buying) so no-one in government wants to rock the boat too much.

You and I don't matter, but $$$'s do!

Who knew that your unfinished burger might be scraped off your plate, processed into dog food, mixed as salvage into cattle feed, and eventually returned to your plate in the form of another burger? I guess that’s the Bush administration’s idea of “recycling.”

Anyone who read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. Read up on the subject, folks. Become informed. It's a good book and it was nominated for the Pulitzer.

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Hello everyone, wanna be part of some kind of community, possible here? anyone here?

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