Reuters reports that the use of melamine is "rampant among farmers and feed-ingredient manufacturers". The words of Sun Erwu,a feedmill owner in Hebei province, which is at the centre of the milk powder scandal, are enough to send tingles down our spine, and raise questions over what is happening to the entire food chain in China:
"It is like a chain... If cows are fed with poor feed and produce lower-protein milk, dairy plants will not accept the milk, so many add melamine," Sun told Reuters on the sidelines of a grains conference.What we'd like to know now is: Is eating beef still safe? How does the adding of melamine to feed that is given to cows affect the beef that ends up on our tables? Any experts out there among the enlightened readership of this blog?"Farmers have no idea what melamine is. They only know if they add it, their milk will not be refused."
Sun said he was not surprised when his meal was found to contain melamine as it was so widely used in Hebei and neighboring Shandong province. He said he was the victim but was fined 30,000 yuan ($4,400) nevertheless.
"I have long wanted to test my products, but to test for melamine is expensive and it takes a long time," he said, adding that testing one sample would cost more than 1,000 yuan ($145) -- and then the laboratory cannot pinpoint the contamination to one ingredient in the meal.
"Soymeal can be contaminated, so can corn gluten meal and cottonseed meal -- suppliers add melamine into all these supplements," said Sun.
Adding melamine to lower-protein cottonseed meal could mean a profit of 1,000 yuan more per tonne as melamine can make the protein level look as high as that of rich soymeal, he said.
The cheating was done by milk dealers and milk-collecting stations, which add melamine to milk to increase protein level to the 3 percent requested by dairy plants, said Sun, who sells his feed to dairy cow farmers.
Still, many farmers, which have small numbers of dairy cows, were victims as they were unaware that melamine was added by dealers at collecting stations, he said.
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I think more importantly what exactly is "rampant" in terms of volume in feeds? The reuters article doesn't provide any data, which is quite scary in itself.
fake protein eh. there is a lot of fakeness going on round here these days.
we need more real less fake.
the party can send dudes into space to fuck around and take pictures but can't hook up safe milk for the people. what happened to 为人民服务 assholes?
The two major Melamine manufacturers in China are in Shandong and in Sichuan province.
Melamine used as a chemical is totally harmless, it is the surface of all kitchen and office furniture, it is the base of toddler plates, cups, cutlery.
Just like sand, it should not be put in food, of course.
Feed is a mix of things to keep animals healthy, especially if kept closely packed like chicken or pigs. If one is sick, all fall sick.
Feed contains synthetic vitamins, amino-acids, anti-fungal, anti-bacterial as well as additives to make the meat more heavy (i.e. retain more water), make the meat look more rosy and make the egg-yolk more yellow. All this is added to the protein, soybean waste, etc.
Although the use of antibiotics in feed has long been discontinued worldwide, discoveries as recent as last year in Chinese export prawns show that they are still being used.
China still produces (and probably uses) one of the most notorious banned antibiotics, long banned in the EU (25 years ago) for use in feed or in veterinary products. Still there is production in China and it is actively being marketed as a feed supplement: Furzaolidone. On alibaba.com you find a dozen or so Chinese exporters selling it.
This product used to be added to chicken-feed to prevent coccidiosis, to pig-feed against parasites and it was banned because the residue in the form of Nitrofurantoine in the egg-yolk and port is a known, potent carcinogene - it causes cancer.
The fact that it is still being marketed as a feed additive might suggest that it is also still being used for that purpose in China.
If I am not completely mistaken, the No. 1 or No. 2 cause of death in China is cancer. Using Furazolidone in feed might contribute to that.
For human application GlaxoSmithKline still produce an anti-diarrhea product containing Furazolidone.
To solfire
--"the party can send dudes into space to fuck around"?
Did USA send dudes into space for fucking around? To my knowledge, the big bang did not give them enough time to bang and to turn spacecraft into an Oral Office.
eastman, what a stupid comment.
^ as if he makes anything else...
I heard that fish farmers in China are not about to stop adding antibiotics to their farms anytime soon due to the pollution of the rivers and estuaries. Supposedly, if they stopped using antibiotics, fish and shellfish would die due to infections by other things living in the water. Poor-quality water makes for poor-quality fish.