(Melamine Suspected) Chinese Officials Say Baby Formula Tied to Kidney Stones

[Pita_Purr_Parler]

Somebody needs to jerk a knot in Peter Ben Embarek and ask about melamine cyanurate, the MelaChicken, MelaPork, MelaFish. Or show him the door. I just lost respect for WHO cuz of this painful to read article:

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gYWTr1uigoGZVg0OL7SMP494ukdQ

Limits for melamine in food fixed only recently: WHO1 hour ago

GENEVA (AFP) — Many countries have only recently fixed limits for industrial chemical melamine in food products, a World Health Organisation expert said.

This is because the chemical was not considered a substance found in food before a scandal broke out in China where milk products were tainted with the substance, Peter Ben Embarek, WHO food safety expert told AFP late Thursday.

"To my knowledge, the EU, Hong Kong and New Zealand have only in recent weeks fixed a transitory limit of 2.5 milligrams per kilogramme for food products, with the limit lowered to 1 milligram per kg for food consumed by children," Embarek said.

He added that "melamine has nothing to do with the food chain and therefore no standard had been fixed on a global level.

"There are billions of chemical products that normally should not be found in food -- it is therefore impossible to fix a limit for all the chemicals. That's the case of melamine," he said.

[yl]

IMHO the chinese government was able to get the WHO  to follow the lead of our FDA ( Freakin dillution agency) to agree with the minimal allowable amounts of melamine. We must protect the chinese companys from financial losses.

When do the people get protection from this crap?

[menusux]

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24442887-12377,00.html

The Australian October 3, 2008

Another China milk product withdrawn

"A FOURTH product containing traces of melamine has been recalled in Australia, as the fallout from the Chinese poisoned milk scandal continues to reverberate around the globe.

"Kirin milk tea made in China has been withdrawn from sale after Australian tests revealed levels of melamine in products sold domestically.

""Consumers are advised not to consume Kirin milk tea made in China,'' Food Standards Australia New Zealand said today.

""Consumers should dispose of the product safely out of the reach of children.''

"The recall of the blended drink follows the withdrawal from sale of the milk-based sweet White Rabbit, Cadbury chocolate eclairs made in China and Lotte Koala Biscuits. "

[menusux]

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i1PW8Su6EECm-m22gV1dABkLdHJQD93J3N1O6

Associated Press October 3, 2008

Vietnam finds tainted products from China

"Vietnam's health ministry has discovered the industrial chemical melamine in 18 food products imported from China and three other countries and has ordered them recalled and destroyed, officials said Friday.

"Russian news agencies reported that food inspectors found nearly two tons of Chinese dry milk believed to be contaminated with melamine. And Philippines health officials found melamine in two of 30 milk products from China tested for the chemical.

"Australian food regulators recalled China-made Kirin Milk Tea after tests in found the drink contained melamine. It is the fourth product withdrawn from the country's stores in the wake of China's tainted milk scandal.

"Recent tests in Vietnam found melamine in dairy products and crackers imported from China, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, according to the Ministry of Health's Web site. It did not list all the brand names that tested positive for melamine, but among them were five different varieties of Yili milk, one of the brands found to be contaminated in China.

""We will intensify our inspections for melamine contamination to ensure the safety of consumers," said Nguyen Thi Khanh Tram, vice director of Vietnam's food safety administration.

"Most of the contaminated items were milk and dairy products from China, the ministry said.

"However, they also included crackers imported from Malaysia and Indonesia as well as a powdered dairy creamer imported from Thailand. It was not clear whether those products had been produced in those countries or simply shipped to Vietnam from warehouses there.

"Even before the test results were announced, retailers across Vietnam had begun removing tons of Chinese dairy products from their shelves and importers have been destroying them, Vietnamese media reported.

"Philippine Health Secretary Francisco Duque III identified the two tainted brands Friday as Mengniu and Yili, which have already been found to be contaminated in tests in China."

[straybaby]

IMHO the chinese government was able to get the WHO  to follow the lead of our FDA ( Freakin dillution agency) to agree with the minimal allowable amounts of melamine. We must protect the chinese companys from financial losses.

When do the people get protection from this crap?

On the noon news, they had a brief piece on this and how it wasn't harmful in the 'approved'. levels. I need to see if they story is up on the website because I wasn't totally tuned in when they started talking about it. Something tells me if the new talking point on the news is approved "harmless" levels, we won't be seeing much in the way of recalls or even which products contain melamine here.

[3catkidneyfailure]

In my opinion, here's a blog entry based on something first published in the Huffington Post, that
indicates to some degree why the FDA is not protecting consumers and why it's so important for
concerned consumers to keep each other informed of dangerous adulterated food products, including
these products being found containing melamine from China. There are individuals in the FDA who would
like to protect consumers, but until food safety reform occurs apparently can't:

http://theresma.spaces.live.com:80/blog/cns!80EE15D075B65A13!571.entry --
wow, link has changed since yesterday. sorry. Scroll down to two part series Warning, this agency's
recommendations may be hazardous to your health:

http://theresma.spaces.live.com/?_c11_BlogPart_BlogPart=blogview&_c=BlogPart&partqs=amonth%3d10%26ayear%3d2008

[menusux]

http://theresma.spaces.live.com:80/blog/cns!80EE15D075B65A13!571.entry

3cat--

Here's the working link for that.

[3catkidneyfailure]

Thank you, menusux. The link changed since I saved it on this opinion piece.

[3catkidneyfailure]

http://www.economist.com:80/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12343910

Land of milk and money
Oct 3rd 2008
From Economist.com

... But something fishy seems to be going on here. For one thing, melamine is not all that easy to dissolve into milk. For another, there's been a worldwide shortage of melamine for some time now. Its price has shot up to more than $1,750 per tonne from $1,100 a few years ago.

So why use an expensive industrial chemical that's in short supply to dilute a dirt cheap product like milk? The answer can only be that either some flaw rendered the melamine industrially worthless, or it wasn't melamine at all. The first suggestion is scary enough; the second is even more ominous.

The only thing your correspondent can imagine that would render melamine industrially worthless is if it were reclaimed waste from the production process.

Industrially, melamine is usually made by heating urea in the presence of a catalyst. Because large amounts of ammonia and carbon dioxide are given off in the process, most modern plants now combine melamine production with urea production, which uses ammonia and carbon dioxide as feedstocks. As the two processes feed off one another, a combined plant is considerably more efficient than two separate ones.

But the final stage—washing the melamine and turning it into crystal form—produces lots of effluent that needs treating before releasing into the environment. The usual way to do that is to filter the waste water and pipe that away, and then dispose of the concentrated solids separately.

Those accumulated solids are around 70% melamine, with the rest being made up of various by-products, including our old friend cyanuric acid. As mentioned before, a mixture of melamine and cyanuric acid can be a nasty witches' brew, especially when ingested by infants.

But what if it's not melamine that's being used to spike China's diluted milk? Urea may be not as rich in nitrogen, but it's certainly a whole lot cheaper (around $650 per tonne). Sprayed into the milk at the temperature used to create a powdered product for baby food and confectionery, enough of the urea would be converted into melamine to show up in tests.

If that's the case, where does the urea come from? Is it really fertiliser—or something else cattle produce in prodigious quantities? Perhaps that's why the Chinese authorities are suddenly so keen to blame more hygienic melamine for all their woes.

[straybaby]

3Cat,

Very disturbing article there. Basically, we have the FDA and others "approving" "safe" levels and no mention of CA.

[3catkidneyfailure]

I'm no scientist and not a very bright bulb. Is this saying two separate contaminations,
melamine residue waste and cow pee?

[menusux]

http://www.yle.fi/news/id103472.html

YLE News Finland October 3, 2008

Melamine Found in Sweets and Biscuits

"Small amounts of the toxic substance melamine have been found in sweets and biscuits on sale in Finland.

"According to The Finnish Food Safety Authority, melamine has been found in White Rabbit confectionery and in Koala biscuits. The products pose no health danger to the public but have been removed from the market."

And here we see them not thinking about other additives either.

What I take from the article is that the heat from the chocolate making process would convert the urea into detectable melamine.  They were using urea to fake tests until it became common to test for it--then enter melamine.  This is what was said at the time of the pet food crisis.

[3catkidneyfailure]

Old habits are hard to break if they continue to boost profit?

Anyone have links to urea testing limits?

[JJ]

One of the people making a comment on the link from 3cat - Land of Milk and Money - had this to say:

"High nitrogen chemicals can't be that cheap: Hasn't the price of fertilizer been climbing steadily? And for the PET FOOD POISONINGS, how would it make sense to contaminate something as cheap as pet food with an expensive chemical? However, cow waste products are another story.

I think this warrants an in-depth investigation from the Economist."

[Pita_Purr_Parler]

http://www.yle.fi/news/id103472.html

And here we see them not thinking about other additives either.

What I take from the article is that the heat from the chocolate making process would convert the urea into detectable melamine.  They were using urea to fake tests until it became common to test for it--then enter melamine.  This is what was said at the time of the pet food crisis.

The article seems to ignore that formaldehyde is relatively cheap and that in the media interviews in China they've already alluded to using it to make melamine liquid so that they can add it to liquid milk. With Urea being really expensive in China and lessening production that way for melamine, they used cow/animal/human urine in the process.

The article seemed to imply that melamine was a "fluke" from processing. I don't agree. There's been way too much scrap melamine in animal feeds preceeding this MelaMilk scandal (re: The early 2007 reports from Thailand baby pigs and astronomical amounts of melamine/cyanuric acid in feed "mostly" from China. Which by the way, implies another country may be doing it also.)

I don't care if I'm right or wrong, and can't look much more foolish than the FDA  , but Bernard seems to have been right. High levels of Uric acid in the animals system from metabolizing high levels of nitrogen compounds (melamine, ammelide, ammeline) can replace the cyanuric acid part of the equation...

All the things in gout are most likely going to be the long term consequences and a clue to caring for damaged animals.. but gout is human, is this what it looks like in animals dining on high levels of MARC?? pretty darn close is my bet.  

Scrap melamine being used adds more toxic components to the whole picture.  None of these observers seem to acknowledge the whole picture, or they don't want to scare people.  Pet owners have already been scared for a very, very long time.

http://www.goutpal.com/hyperuricemia.html

Hyperuricemia
"Here, we'll look at general causes of excess uric acid or hyperuricemia. The causes are either excess uric acid production or insufficient uric acid excretion. They fall into 4 main groups: -
Metabolism
Increased breakdown of cells through illness, starvation, exertion and other factors.
Diet
Increased production of uric acid from direct breakdown of food. Likely to be a small part of the problem, but can tip the balance.
Enzymes
Xanthine oxidase, in the liver, drives the final stages of purine metabolism, converting xanthine and hypoxanthine into uric acid. Injury and certain nutrition deficiencies appear to trigger increased xanthine oxidase activity. This can lead to an increase in the percentage of purines that convert to uric acid.
Kidneys
This complicated organ both secretes uric acid from the blood and reabsorbs it. The net effect will be either an increase or decrease in uric acid in the blood. pH levels and hydration are significant factors that affect this. There are many others including general health, medications and heredity.

http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/uric+acid

white, odorless, tasteless crystalline substance formed as a result of purine degradation in man, other primates, dalmatians, birds, snakes, and lizards. The last three groups of animals also channel all amino acid degradation into the formation of glycine, aspartic acid, and glutamine, which combine to form purines and finally uric acid; these so-called uricotelic organisms thus excrete uric acid as the major end-product of the metabolism of all nitrogen-containing compounds. Uric acid is a very weak organic acid that is barely soluble in water and insoluble in alcohol and ether. The urates are its salts. Uric acid is present in human urine only in extremely small amounts but constitutes a large part of the body waste matter of birds (see guano) and of reptiles. It collects sometimes in the human kidneys or bladder in calculi, or stones, and is responsible, when present in tissues or deposited upon bones in the form of urates, for gouty conditions (see gout). It occurs also in normal human blood. The pure acid is obtained from guano and other similar substances. Upon decomposition urea is obtained.