Posted on 04/24/2007 2:22:37 PM PDT by Milwaukee_Guy
True enough. Sigh. I guess being permanent preferred partner means screwing us over with impunity under the watchful, useless eyes of the FDA. Sorry, venting. The melamine contamination just doesn’t seem ‘accidental’.
U.S. examines if pet food contaminant in human food
Yahoo News
4/24/07
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. health officials are now looking at whether humans may have consumed food containing a chemical linked to a recall of pet foods and livestock feed, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Tuesday.
FDA officials said they would inspect imports of six grain products used in foods ranging from bread to baby formula for traces of melamine, a chemical thought to have killed and sickened cats and dogs.
The California Agriculture Department said separately it was trying to contact 50 people who bought pork that may have come from pigs fed food containing melamine. The state's health department recommended humans not consume the meat, but said any health risk was minimal.
Melamine, a chemical used in plastics and fertilizer, has already been found in wheat gluten and rice protein imported from China for use in some pet foods, triggering a recall of more than 100 brands.
The FDA named the six grain products to be inspected as wheat gluten, corn gluten, corn meal, soy protein, rice bran and rice protein.
"We're going to target firms that we know are receiving imported products," said David Acheson, chief medical officer of the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition in a conference call with reporters. "The goal is obviously to sample as much as we can."
There is little research on melamine's effect on humans, according to World Health Organization, but the chemical has been studied in animals for its risk of kidney problems and cancer. The WHO does not classify the chemical as a carcinogen for people.
Some tainted material was used for hog feed before the contamination was found, and officials said on Tuesday thousands of pigs might be affected on farms in North and South Carolina, California, New York, Utah and possibly Ohio.
The FDA is working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and several states to investigate the now-quarantined farms and whether hogs on those farms were slaughtered for human food.
"Some of the hog operations were fairly sizable," said Stephen Sundlof, director of the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine. But USDA spokesman Steve Cohen said the feed was sold to smaller and independent hog farms.
A poultry farm in Missouri also may have received tainted feed, officials added.
Still, the FDA has no intention of banning imports of wheat gluten, rice protein or similar products from China.
"We believe the safety net is in place to make sure that no additional products are going to get into the commerce of the United States," said David Elder, director of FDA's enforcement office.
Melamine was first found in March in wheat gluten used for some pet foods. Menu Foods, Procter & Gamble Co., Colgate-Palmolive Co., Nestle SA and Del Monte Foods Co. have recalled pet products made with the gluten.
More recently, rice protein tainted with melamine was also shipped to at least five pet food manufacturers by a supplier that imported it from China, the FDA has said.
On Monday, two U.S. lawmakers said a second company likely imported rice protein from China that was contaminated with Melamine. FDA officials on Tuesday would not say whether there was a second importer.
I am sure they will not ignore the spin-off data if the latter is the case--which is likely.
We are horribly dependant on the manufacturing facilities of other nations for a great deal now, but the production of food has always been a strong point for us. We have consistently had one of the most safe domestic food supplies in the world. Only the introduction of foreign materials at some level has created a problem, along with the increase in procesed food components rather than whole food.
Most of this material was intended ultimately for animal consumption, but we need to be careful what we feed the animals who feed us.
Three words - - - MOST FAVORED NATION
There is still time to save domestic food production. We all need to just say no to any Chinese foodstuffs or food ingredients.
1. Read the labels! If it says “China”. Put it down.
I love Oriental food. I was at Aldi’s and had eight boxes of different oriental noodle side dishes. I almost bought them but found out 6 were from China and had either wheat gluten or rice protein. All 6 went back on the shelf. The other two were from Thailand and did not have wheat gluten.
2. Tell your retailer you will not buy Chinese food products.
3. Look on your pantry at home and contact the manufacturer if any items are made in China. Cite all of the current problems and tell them you will not buy any more, if it is made in China.
Good idea. I am emailing large companies asking them if their products have any ingredients from China. We need to get them scared.
“North Carolina investigators are attempting to determine whether the melamine was absorbed into the meat of the pigs and whether it would eventually be safe to eat.”
Always the dollars.
http://www.fda.gov/ora/fiars/ora_import_ia9928.html
IA #99-28, 4/19/07, IMPORT ALERT #99-28, “DETENTION WITHOUT PHYSICAL EXAMINATION OF RICE PROTEIN, RICE PROTEIN CONCENTRATE AND RICE GLUTEN DUE TO THE PRESENCE OF MELAMINE”
I wonder if our Congress is similarly gutless. This is about our health and safety as a country, not just an intellectual exercise in whether or not free trade is a good idea with a totalitarian state.
“North Carolina Department of Agriculture officials said that none of the hogs that ate the tainted food have entered the food chain for human consumption.”
Sounds like we had a close call, though, and what tainted foods HAVE entered the food chain that we don’t know about.
The average Chinese really, really hates Americans.* But they do envy our success, even while predicting that China will rapidly overtake the US, which is *obviously* in decline.
But for the average Chinese, making money takes precedence over ideology. Which is why the heart of this scandal is money. For the perpetrators, harming Americans is just an added bonus.
* I ran into this in NYC after 9/11, when many Chinese I spoke to, in Chinese, exulted over the attacks in the moments and days following. I thought this was some kind of anomaly until I visited China - it was worse there. Far worse.
This is only for one month!
OASIS Refusals by Country for March 2007
Oscar Mayer would start a full-fledged panic. I think I’ll stick to beef bologna.
Not sure how they could know that.
I am a farmer and I know what regulation and inflation has done to the prices of our inputs. We literally spend 10Xs what we spent when we started farming and for the most part prices for our crops are actually lower. Our only saving grace is a niche crop and the new higher yielding cotton varieties and technology. We're in the process of re-mortgaging our farm...again. Thank God land prices in California and Arizona are driving speculators and people who sold their farms for obscene amounts of money our way so it will appraise well, I hope because it's April 24 and we don't have an operating loan yet, we're operating on charge accounts at this moment.
I think we're getting pretty close to the point that we will not be able to meet Americas food needs. I've always said that the time would come when farmers would be respected, that time isn't here yet but it will come. There are no young farmers out there anymore and the land is going for housing developments. In our county we have 5% of the farmers we had when we started 30 yrs ago (and 90% of them are over 60) and 50% or less of the land being farmed. We'll make it a few more years but I'd sell out to a developer in a second for the right price. Farming is too damned hard and the stress is even worse.
LOL, it sure would! I don't care for bologna (or many of the 'cured' meats) so I guess it's PB & J or maybe ... plain toast? ;-)
Like slate or shale stones in a campfire. Melamine plates explode in a microwave.
I’m waiting for the YouTube video.....
Prediction: Now that the Genie is out of the bottle, there is no containing it. Let the games begin.
There are some here, their grandfather or dad incorporated the farm and passed the interest on to the kids, or at least the ones interested in farming. There are a few niche farmers who are relatively recent start-ups, but for the most part, dry-land grain farming is an inherited peerage.
As you noted, costs are too high, profits too low, and there is one heck of a lot of work involved--all time sensitive and for the most part, weather dependant.
Some crops in this area (sugar beets come to mind) are grown on irrigated tracts, but most are not (Wheat, durum, sunflower, rapeseed, oats, barley, to name the prominent ones.)
The idea of five and six figure seed loans is unreal to me, but that is what it takes to operate.
We'll make it a few more years but I'd sell out to a developer in a second for the right price. Farming is too damned hard and the stress is even worse.
I can't say I blame you.
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