Melamine, poisons and the misappliance of science
The takeaways from rogue Chinese food additives
As melamine alerts reverberate around the world in the wake of China's dairy export industry, it affords us an opportunity to look at bad chemistry while considering the scale of the global food market. And how vulnerable consumers are when garden-variety greed, not terrorism, is the driver in mass poisonings.
In the first quarter of last year, the Chinese company, Xuzhou Anying, was advertising dust of melamine as something it called "ESB protein powder" on the global market trading website, Alibaba. "The latest product, ESB protein powder, which is researched and developed by Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Co., Ltd... Contains protein 160 - 300 percent, which solves the problem for shortage of protein resource," it boasted.
Awkwardly worded and a bit fishy, it nevertheless apparently hooked North American pet food makers and animal feed distributors - specifically ChemNutra, Menu Foods and Wilbur-Ellis - who lost control of their supply chain and weren't able to resist claims - which should surely have raised eyebrows - for an apparently magical protein powder. In this way, melamine found its way into a great deal of pet food as a protein extender. Xuzhou's money gig ended when someone went too far and upped the dose enough to cause precipitation in the kidneys, killing and sickening a large but not easy to track number of pets.
News stories from a year ago initially noted that melamine was not originally thought to be that toxic. But, at the time, few knew that it had a use as a processed food adulterant chosen specifically because it tested as protein. Paradoxically, it's also used in chemical combination with urea to make plastics, one example being toilet seats made in China, and bought at the local hardware store by this writer.
China makes a lot of melamine and the country also manufactures and exports tens of billions of dollars worth of powders and concentrates for use in processed food. Readers can see where this is going. Completely stamping out criminal rings making and diverting melamine for use in processed food is going to be a long process, if it can be done at all.
Nitrogen, yum...
Ironically, urea used to be used as a food adulterant, too. In the US, as late as 1985 the compound had been used to step on wheat to boost nitrogen determinations and profit for the seller.
Now, just in case one gets the idea this is bagging on China too much, consider it takes two parties to make this crime work. The people who make and sell the melamine. And the western firms in the food industry working the territory for the best possible deals, in the process giving up tight supervision and quality control of their suppliers.
COMMENTS
Thanks
Thanks for casting some light on the news stories about malamine in food. This is the kind of useful news that I get only from The Register.
What we need
Is a law and decision making body with a large enough pair to make sure that when this happens, heads roll at the very highest levels, people screw up, CEO's pay and they pay BIG!! To remove the uberriche privilage of being immune to the law unless "it's bloody obvious and we can't hide it anymore"...make THEM as subject to the law as US and then we can stop this...either that or boycott and really boycott properly....hit them where it so obviously hurts...
anyone who puts profits before the actual health and lives of it's customers deserves punishment....car companies have to conform to International safety standards and it's time for food manufacturers to be subject to the same..
United Biscuits - Penguins
I wrote to United Biscuits back in May about a packet of discusting tatsting Penguins. We both found them so horrible that we spat them out. I took them back to the shop and the staff and customers tried them and spat them out. We opened a freash pack and they were the same. I wrote to United Biscuits who sent me an envelope to post them back in. My United Biscuits contact wrote back saying all her staff and the Lab had tried them and there was nothing wrong with them.
Obviously I know they were not right and I know that UB know they were not right. However they chose to bribe me with vouchers and call an end to the matter.
Now I am thinking, could this have been Melamine?
We need a puking icon.
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