General Discussion

Well, it looks like the first case of melamine-contaminated milk has been found outside of China.

www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2008/09/21/ap5451085.html

Edit: It looks like Forbes killed the above link. Try below. Different story, same topic.
www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2008/09/21/ap5451114.html

" . . no illnesses had been reported elsewhere until the Hong Kong government said a 3-year-old girl had been diagnosed with a kidney stone after drinking milk containing melamine.

The girl was diagnosed with a kidney stone but was in good condition and has been discharged from the hospital, the government said in a statement late Saturday.

The girl's parents took her for a checkup because she had been drinking milk made by Chinese dairy Yili daily for the past 15 months. Yili Industrial Group Co. is one of 22 companies whose milk and dairy products were recalled after batches of their products were found to contain melamine."

Big deal, right?  The girl who got sick drank milk from a Chinese industrial company that doesn't sell milk in the US.  Well, it goes on.

"Hong Kong's two major supermarket chains said Sunday they were recalling milk powder made by Swiss manufacturer Nestle after a newspaper reported it contains melamine.

Spokeswomen from PARKnSHOP and Wellcome said action was taken after Hong Kong's Apple (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) Daily reported Sunday that tests it commissioned showed that Nestle milk powder made in China's northeastern Heilongjiang province contained melamine."

This is a publication which is reputable enough that all the bigs in the West take it seriously.  They wouldn't commission an incompetent test.  It's very likely that the results are true, even though Nestle is saying they're not.

Big deal, though, right?  Even though many American and European companies make formula in China, the FDA has banned the sale of all Chinese-made milk products in the US.  So we're safe?  Nope.  Even in earlier crises, contamination of products on American shelves was found _after_ FDA bans, not before. FDA bans are great for preventing largescale problems, but they're not 100% effective.  The FDA has already warned that some may have slipped through, and we will probably see a bit getting past even now.

You should be doubly careful if you buy offbrand formula or from a discount supermarket.   The buyers for these companies have the least stringest restrictions, and they are usually the ones chasing the best deals, not really bothering to question the supply chain.  You should be triply careful if you are buying from an ethnic supermarket.   These places usually have supply chains which fall out of the norm for American retailers, and while it's great for variety and good deals on "exotic products", they usually are the conduits for contaminated products in cases like these for the same reasons.

Remember that most FDA bans are largely voluntary. Yes, there are inspections, but they only hit the smallest percentage of incoming cargo, and beyond that, traders can forge their supply chain documents. This has been a problem in other countries with earlier contamination problems. Beyond that, the massive penalties for violators only deter the big corporations from knowingly violating bans. Small traders and shipping companies, which many corporations rely on anyway, sometimes roll the dice to get extra profit.

So lets talk about melamine.  A few quick questions.

Should I worry?

Melamine is a toxin.  If ingested in sufficient quantities, it can cause problems with the renal system.  This is the system which includes the urinary system and is responsible, among other things, for filtering the blood of toxins.  Adults can usually handle ingestion of melamine, but children are not quite as resilient.  Older children may merely develop a kidney stone, which should be treatable with no lasting ill effects.  The very young may have outright renal failure and die.  So far, the official toll in China has been 6,200 sickened and 4 dead because of melamine poisoning.  Most outside bodies estimate the actual figures to be far higher.  Should you worry?  Worrying itself doesn't help.  You should be careful.

So what is melamine?

Well, pet owners will recognize the word.  This is the same substance which contaminated pet food earlier and caused thousands of pet deaths due to renal failure.  So what is it?   Well, melamine has many uses.   These are irrelevant to this discussion, but you can see them here.
www.wisegeek.com/what-is-melamine.htm
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melamine

How is it getting into the formula?

Edit: I fixed some factual errors here.

Well, it's not always getting into the formula.   It's sometimes getting into the cows.   In fact, even cows in the US have melamine in their bodies.  This is due to a compound called cyromazine.   Cyromazine is used as an incesticide and larvicide.  Cows in the US ingest trace quantities either through their feed or through the use of medications or pour-on applications designed to prevent or treat myiasis.  In the body, the compound is then metabolized into meleamine.  However, in American livestock, the melamine concentrations are so low that we don't need to worry about it.

So what's different in China?

In China, we're seeing far greater amounts.   How and why?  Well, China is the world's largest producer of melamine, and it's something all countries use for various products.  However, it has the same problem as ethanol these days.  Prices are stable, but the cost of materials to make it have gone up.  For that reason, some producers seek to sell the leftover scrap melamine (otherwise useless) locally.  Who is buying?  Chinese farmers.
www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/30/business/30food.php

Basically, many Chinese farmers mix melamine powder into their feed, even though it has no nutritional benefit, because it looks like protein on government tests which determine feed quality.  The animals themselves aren't harmed by it, and there wasn't a lot of evidence of the harm of melamine until very recently, so farmers see it as harmless cheating on protein tests.

Even if they didn't do this, sometimes farmers directly adulterate milk for the same reasons.  By adding melamine powder to milk in trace amounts, they can make the milk appear to have more protein, and thus be more nutritious, than it actually is.

So is this what's causing melamine contamination in milk products?

It _probably_ is.   I would personally say yes, but there has been no definitive evidence.  There aren't many clear answers on this topic.  In fact, we're still not sure why melamine poisoning was so fatal during the pet food scare.

So what should I do?

Your formula is probably safe. Unless you're buying offbrand or from an ethnic market, I'd say your odds are 1/1,000,000 of buying a contaminated product in America at this point. Even if you are buying from one of those places, the odds are exceedingly slim. I just threw this out there as a warning. If your kid is old enough, buying local, freshly-made milk would probably be best for now if you're worried.

Isn't Hong Kong in China?

They said the baby used formula from China too

Originally posted by Kurush

So what should I do?

Your formula is probably safe. Unless you're buying offbrand or from an ethnic market, I'd say your odds are 1/1,000,000 of buying a contaminated product in America at this point. Even if you are buying from one of those places, the odds are exceedingly slim. I just threw this out there as a warning. If your kid is old enough, buying local, freshly-made milk would probably be best for now if you're worried.

I'd say that they should be worried. Whenever there is a contamination problem and China is involved it is all encompassing.

The catastrophe with the dog food just kept going on for months where new additions were added to the list every other day. The lead paint on kids toys spanned for decades, again encompassing pretty much everything imaginable, and we still don't know (never will) all the toys that are covered with lead. The only thing that may have been contained was the poisoned toothpaste.

I am 100% certain that they will find tainted formula over here, and under name brands.

"The animals themselves aren't harmed by it, and there wasn't a lot of evidence of the harm of melamine until very recently, so farmers see it as harmless cheating on protein tests."

A year or so ago, maybe longer, melamine was found in high quantities in various pet foods that were ultimately imported from China. Cats in particular were found to be susceptible to this stuff; dogs, not so much. It was a moderately big deal for a while, and some people suggested this might be a reflection of a similar contamination in the human food supply.

And now, a year later, we find this. The FDA is a joke. ChiCom agricultural standards are an even bigger joke, only no one is laughing.

Originally posted by Tuor7

"The animals themselves aren't harmed by it, and there wasn't a lot of evidence of the harm of melamine until very recently, so farmers see it as harmless cheating on protein tests."

A year or so ago, maybe longer, melamine was found in high quantities in various pet foods that were ultimately imported from China. Cats in particular were found to be susceptible to this stuff; dogs, not so much. It was a moderately big deal for a while, and some people suggested this might be a reflection of a similar contamination in the human food supply.

And now, a year later, we find this. The FDA is a joke. ChiCom agricultural standards are an even bigger joke, only no one is laughing.

The standards are fine.  Chinese authorities banned these kinds of feed and milk adulteration.  The FDA has banned import of Chinese milk-based products.

The problem is enforcement.  China doesn't even try.  The FDA couldn't possibly enforce it totally.  It's impossible to monitor incoming shipping that closely.  The best they can do is have harbor authorities check manifests and screen random lots as a deterrent.  Not foolproof.

Anyway, regarding animal susceptibility, experts really aren't quite sure as to why so many died.  By all accounts, we shouldn't have seen that many deaths.  It might simply be a reflection of overall weakness in the gene pool for American pets these days, due to overly "pure" breeding.  Livestock is very rarely affected by melamine negatively, especially large animals like cows.

If a standard isn't enforced, than IMO it isn't much of a standard. However, more technically you are correct, and I should have worded my comment a bit better: it is the enforcement aspect that I am deriding.

My comments about the FDA are due to the fact that they've known there were contamination problems for some time through the investigation into the pet food issues. When did the FDA impose the ban? Before or after this latest outbreak? If after, then I think that the data they'd already acquired should've pointed them in the direction of putting roadblocks in place much sooner.

We've known for some time that there are... questionable agricultural practices going on in China, yet it seems to me that we aren't doing much to protect ourselves from them, and I thought that is one of the main reasons the FDA exists.