[mewzilla]

FWIW, on melamine and why melamine might be added....

Melamine (Fire-retardant, nephrotoxic, stain erasing fertilizer)

[verum ago]

CWW is probably right, actually- the melamine was found in concentrations as high as 6.6% by weight, enough that granules were visible-- it's damn near impossible for that kind of concentration to be an accident, especially from use as a fertilizer. Just processing the wheat into gluten should remove basically any pesticides and fertilizers.

When pet food manufacturers make food they have to guarantee its nutritional content to be within certain values. One of the things they check for is protein content- and most tests for protein take advantage of the fact that the vast majority of the nitrogen in a food like that will be its protein content. So most protein tests are actually nitrogen content tests where the results are translated into protein content depending on what proteins are present. Melamine has a very high nitrogen content- 67%, and it's quite plausible that some unscrupulous Chinese manufacturer saw that melamine [prior to this incident and due to lack of research] was considered nontoxic and so threw some into into their protein products to favorably falsify the protein content and make their product appear to be of a higher quality.

[arthurus]

My wife who is a SpecEd teacher had a student a couple of years ago named Mellameen.