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Melamine is a Lesson in Real Food PDF Print E-mail
Written by Kiki Hubbard   
Thursday, 08 January 2009

The investigation that ensued after China's milk scandal -- where melamine, a chemical used in industrial products like plastics and glues, was found in baby milk formula -- showed how unregulated practices can create a dangerous wake that spans the earth. We know now that melamine is often added to some food products so they test for higher protein levels, even though the material offers no actual nutritional benefit.

And we know melamine is also added to livestock feed. Actually, the U.S. knew this well before the China scandal broke. The pet food scare in 2007 involved melamine traces in a wide variety of pet food, from fish to dogs and cats. It's an "open secret in China," the New York Times reported. But has anything changed since then? Maybe not.

In November, hundreds of tons of soymeal from China were taken off the market after testing positive for melamine. The soymeal in question was used to feed organic poultry in western France, and tested 50 times over the recommended limit.

There are a lot of lessons to be gleaned from these events, like how far livestock feed companies will go to earn extra bucks. This time it was adding a fake ingredient to bolster the perception of nutrition without real knowledge of health implications. Isn't it ironic? That which gives the perception of better nutrition might in the end harm and, sadly, kill? But perhaps this case isn't that much different from a host of unpronounceable ingredients on processed food labels, or "foodlike substances," as Michael Pollan calls them. Perhaps melamine has provided a hard lesson in what constitutes real food.

Sources: The Straits Times, New York Times (including image)

Comments (41)Add Comment
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Unregulated???
written by wesley bruce, January 12, 2009
There is no such thing as an unregulated market in a communist country. (Or the wests neo-socialist systems) Communist citizens don't sneeze with out government orders, some overt, some covert. The 'wide spread practice' of forging the protein test results have to have been promulgated by someone of high rank in the regulatory system.
The communist party is getting good at covering up its blunders. Whistle blowers are made to disappear. Reporters reporting this early on were jailed, people found linked to the scandal are thrown out of the party before the trail begins and no one is allowed to publish the fact that they were ranking party members.
The only way this chemical would be so widely used to forge food quality tests (unregulated!!!) is if it came highly recommended or mandated from the relevant national party entity. Someone, with no chemistry qualifications, would up in charge and jumped to the conclusion that Melamine really did raise protein content. Someone from a party family was given the job he or she was never qualified to carry out.


Don't fall for the unregulated verses regulated propaganda. Free market players if allowed would have done independant testing daily, the contamination would have reported freely and charges promptly laid in private courts where the government is not both Judge and defendant at the same time. Where the party, or in the west corrupt regulators can't cover-up and blame some junior staff member.
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