MELAMINE AND GREED

Oct 30, 2008 Editorial

Now that the dust seems to have settled on the contamination of several milk products with melamine that were produced in China, we believe that we ought to examine the fiasco a little closer.

The first thing that strikes us is that the institution that is supposed to protect us against threats like these, the Government Analyst Food and Drug Department, was a bit too reactive.

It dallied too long after the problem had been highlighted in China, after four children had died and more than fifty thousand had been hospitalised.

This was not the first time that Chinese companies had been fingered in the addition of melamine to boost the protein “readings” in food.

Last year there was a scandal in the US and Canada over dog food containing gluten into which the substance had been added and which led to severe renal problems in thousands of animals resulting in several deaths.

One Philippine researcher showed that in 1987, melamine was found in coffee, orange juice, fermented milk and lemon juice, originating from migration of melamine from the cup made of melamine-formaldehyde resin.

From 1979 to 1987, there was widespread melamine contamination of fish and meat meals in Italy and in 2004, there was a nephrotoxicity outbreak in pets in Asia.

The contaminated milk may have been now pulled from our shelves, but what about the risks to those who have already consumed the products?

The presence of melamine in food products is considered safe by the US Food and Drug Administration if it constitutes only 2.5 parts per million: the “doctored” milk from China was found to contain around 520 parts per million.

Someone in authority should pronounce as to the probability of increased renal complications in our population.

This leads to the second point: in the cutthroat world of global competition, companies will sink to any level to boost their products.

The U.S. Government and federal scientists had declared that melamine in food posed “very low risk to humans.” But that conclusion was based on a false assumption – that melamine would contaminate the food supply only through animals that had ingested feeds contaminated with melamine.

They never contemplated that companies would deliberately add it to food products. Melamine is an organic compound with sixty-six percent nitrogen. Normally, it is combined with formaldehyde to produce a melamine resin, a very durable thermosetting plastic, which is used for producing plastic plates, countertops, glues etc… So how does a substance like melamine get into the food supply?

To understand this, you need to understand a little about what goes into “normal food”. Normal foods contain carbohydrates, fats and proteins. Carbohydrates don’t contain any nitrogen, and neither do fats. But proteins do.

Proteins are made from chains of amino acids, and each amino acid contains a nitrogen atom. In other words, in any normal, unadulterated food, protein is the only source of nitrogen.

Therefore, the common tests that scientists use to determine the amount of protein in a food is simply look at the amount of nitrogen in the food.

It is this nitrogen “count” that the melamine, with its surfeit of nitrogen, boosts. So it’s now realistic to assume melamine contamination of human consumed foods is plausible and we will have to be on the lookout.

The third point also concerns the ethics and morality of global business. It has now been over four decades that companies which produce dairy products have been warned not to promote their “milk” concoctions as substitute for the breast milk of mothers.

Yet here we have possibly millions of Chinese babies being weaned on artificial milk, which are endemically nutritionally deficient to begin with.

The addition of melamine in milk for babies is only taking the callousness of foisting substandard products to new and frightening lows, under the campaign of “progress”.

A while back we even had a local entrepreneur importing milk that was substandard and foisting it on an unsuspecting public.

The dangers highlighted by the melamine scare should make us aware of the need of our Government Analyst Food and Drug Department to be constantly monitoring the foods that are now flooding our country under the liberalisation regime that has been foisted on our country; not only when there is a crisis.

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MELAMINE AND GREED

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MELAMINE AND GREED

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