 The Shandong Mingshui Great Chemical factory in Zhangqiu, Shandong Province, which manufactures urea, melamine and melamine scrap. (Ariana Lindquist for The New York Times) |
Who knows what kind of shit is adulterating our imported and domestic food supply? But whatever it is, it’s about to hit the fan.
Months after dogs and cats started dropping dead of renal failure from melamine-tainted pet food, American consumers are beginning to learn how long and how wide this contaminant has also poisoned the human food supply. Last week, as California officials revealed that at least 45 people are known to have eaten tainted pork, the USDA announced that it would pay farmers millions of dollars to destroy and dispose of thousands of hogs fed “salvaged” pet food.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Through the salvaging practice, melamine-tainted pet food has likely contaminated America’s livestock for as long as it has been killing and sickening America’s pets — as far back as August of 2006, or even earlier. And while it may seem alarmist to suggest without absolute proof that Americans have been eating melamine-tainted pork, chicken and farm-raised fish for the better part of a year, the FDA and USDA seem to be preparing to brace Americans for the worst. In an unusual, Saturday afternoon joint press release, the regulators tasked with protecting the safety of our nation’s food supply go to convoluted lengths to reassure the public that eating melamine-tainted pork is perfectly safe.
In a fit of reverse-homeopathy the press release steps us through the dilution process, tracing the path of melamine-tainted rice protein through the food system. The rice protein is a partial ingredient in pet food, we are told, which is itself only a partial ingredient in the feed given to hogs, who then “excrete” some of the melamine in their urine. And, “even if present in pork,” they reassure us, “pork is only a small part of the average American diet.”
How comforting. But the press release reaches its Orwellian best in its insistence that there is no evidence of any “human illness” due to melamine exposure:
“While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention systems would have limited ability to detect subtle problems due to melamine and melamine-related compounds, no problems have been detected to date.”
Translation: “We are unable to detect such problems, but don’t worry, no such problems have been detected.”
It is hard to read this as anything but a preemptive press release, a calculated effort to reassure the public that it is safe to eat trace quantities of melamine… just days before they inevitably reveal that Americans have in fact been consuming it unawares for months. Menu Foods, the company at the center of the controversy, has recalled product dating back to November 8, 2006. Manufacturing forty to fifty percent of America’s wet pet food, the salvaged product from their massive operations must have surely contaminated livestock feed nationwide.
And it gets worse. Tomorrow the New York Times will report from China, detailing how nitrogen-rich melamine scrap, produced from coal, is routinely ground into powder and mixed into low-grade wheat, corn, soybean or other proteins to inflate the protein analysis of animal feed:
The melamine powder has been dubbed “fake protein” and is used to deceive those who raise animals into thinking they are buying feed that provides higher nutrition value.
“It just saves money,” says a manager at an animal feed factory here. “Melamine scrap is added to animal feed to boost the protein level.”
The practice is widespread in China. For years animal feed sellers have been able to cheat buyers by blending the powder into feed with little regulatory supervision, according to interviews with melamine scrap traders and agricultural workers here.
[…] Many animal feed operators advertise on the Internet seeking to purchase melamine scrap. And melamine scrap producers and traders said in recent interviews that they often sell to animal feed makers.
“Many companies buy melamine scrap to make animal feed, such as fish feed,” says Ji Denghui, general manager of the Fujian Sanming Dinghui Chemical Company. “I don’t know if there’s a regulation on it. Probably not. No law or regulation says ‘don’t do it,’ so everyone’s doing it. The laws in China are like that, aren’t they? If there’s no accident, there won’t be any regulation.”
“The practice is widespread in China,” the Times reports, and has been going on “for years.” And it is not just wheat, corn, rice and soybean proteins that should be suspect, but the animals who feed on it, including all imported Chinese pork, poultry, farm-raised fish, and their various by-products. Despite FDA and USDA efforts to allay concerns about consuming melamine-tainted meat, the health effects are unstudied, and the permissible level is zero. If China could impose a three-year (and counting) ban on the import of U.S. beef after a single incident of Mad Cow disease, then surely the U.S. would be justified in imposing a ban on Chinese vegetable protein and livestock products due to such a prevalent, industrywide contamination.
And if in the coming weeks this ban is finally imposed, the question we must ask government regulators is… why so late? Why did they wait until our children licked the last remaining drop of bacon fat off their fingers before alerting the public to the potential health risk, however low? It seems inconceivable that the regulators tasked with overseeing the safety and purity of our nation’s food supply did not at least imagine the potential scope of this crisis back in early March when they first learned that Chinese wheat gluten was poisoning dogs and cats. Indeed, the very fact that they were so quick to focus in on melamine as the adulterating agent suggests they at least suspected what they were facing.
It may make for entertaining TV, but popular shows like CSI get forensic toxicology exactly backwards. You don’t run a substance through a mass spectrometer and 30 seconds later get a complete readout of its chemical makeup. Rather, you painstakingly look for specific chemicals or groups of chemicals one at a time, until you find the offending toxin. Once you get beyond the basic “tox screen,” forensics is as much art as science — investigators use evidence and intuition to narrow the search to those compounds that are most likely to be the culprit.
And so it begs the question as to why — in the face of an apparent wheat gluten contamination that reportedly killed nine out of twenty dogs and cats in Menu Foods’ quarterly taste test — would FDA scientists test for melamine, a chemical widely believed to be nontoxic?
Why? Because they thought they might find it.
Lacking adequate cooperation from FDA officials one is constantly forced to speculate, but given the circumstances it is reasonable to assume that the search for melamine was prompted by the “nitrogen spiking” theory, rather than the other way around. Based on their knowledge of the evidence, Chinese agricultural practices, the globalizing food industry, and perhaps prior history, the FDA hypothesized that unscrupulous Chinese manufacturers may have intentionally adulterated low quality wheat gluten in an effort to pass it off as a high-protein, high-value product. And nothing would do the job better than melamine.
According to one synthetic organic chemist, melamine is by far the perfect candidate. It is high in nitrogen (66-percent by weight), nonvolatile (ie, it doesn’t explode,) and dirt cheap. It is also — at least according to both the scientific literature and chemical supply catalogs — widely considered to be nontoxic. For FDA officials, the mystery never seemed to be how melamine made its way into wheat, rice and corn protein, but rather, why it was suddenly killing dogs and cats.
The technical answer may center on the unexpected interaction between melamine, cyanuric acid, and other melamine by-products, but the practical answer may be much more pedestrian. Some samples of adulterated wheat gluten reportedly tested as high as 6.6-percent melamine by weight, an off the chart concentration that was likely the accidental result of some less than thorough mixing. Had this accident never occurred — had cats, with their sensitive renal systems, not been the canary in the coal mine of melamine toxicity — we might never have known that our children and our pets were being slowly poisoned by Chinese capitalism.
Well, despite the FDA’s best efforts, now we know.
NOTE:
The New York Times article referenced above originally appeared in the online edition of the the International Herald Tribune. It has since been pulled.
UPDATE:
The NY Times piece is now online.
We should simply ban the importation of all agricultural and food products from China. If the accidental appearance of a diseased cow or two caused them to ban all our beef, then deliberate contamination should cause us to ban all their imports.
Goldy: Rick P. is doing stellar work on this issue also. I urge all to check out Perlstein’s site. Go to:
http://commonsense.ourfuture.o....._perlstein
@1: Well, there goes the Wall-Mart business model down the toilet.
Lets hope that this is just a topic for Goldy to make an issue of.
There are many things in the food supply, not only additives like melamine, but “natural” ingredients that are bad for us such as pyrolized hydrocarbons .. the inevitable result of the invention of fire 100k years ago.
Other additives, fluorine, are believed to be good for us.
We also have mass culture fads that are a\scary … e.g. vitamin overdosing. We may need vit. C but primitive primates never got a megadose of the stuff.
Here is another topic to fear: monoculture! As the world shrinks, the variety of species and genetic diversity within species we eat is decreasing. This is a bit like marrying your brother or sister. The less diversity, the greater the chance of a disaster.
We will see!
I think the 6.6% melamine concentration was deliberate. Melamine has about 5 to 6 times the nitrogen content, by weight, of amino acids. So 6.6% melamine would make something appear to have over 30% protein, instead of practically none.
Using “melamine scrap”, they should get a rather impure form of the chemical. Instead of pure melamine, there should be nastier chemicals such as cyanamide and cyanuric acid, and other precursors to melamine or products of melamine decomposition.
The key differences to this particular situation is for one, the deceit.
Then the sluggishness, once it was first brought to the attention of the importers, health-agencies, etc.
The fact of other toxins, does not diminish or condone the presence of any other contamination in the food supply!
Goldy,
Keep up the good work!
Jesus Fucking Christ.
I think there needs to be some subpoenas flying between the House and the FDA, PDQ.
What did they know, and when did they know it?
This is what happens when you have a Publican government on the take from the lobby that represents the ag industry. Hopefuly it’s all Publicans dying from this shit.
The US is a net exporter of food. I doubt that we are importing these products for use in human food to a large extent. Pet food is different. Mystery meat is often used for cheap protein. Some poor people eat pet food because it is cheaper and that could create problems. Feeding crap to hogs is not uncommon but a bad practice. The biggest food contamination problem in the US was in 1974 when PBB fire retardant was mixed in with animal feed. That happened in Michigan.
Many food processors take special steps to ensure that their products are not contaminated. They charge more for their “brand” and take extra precautions to protect those “brands”. Many “brand” companies do their own testing and go beyond FDA requirements.
@11 Find out something about the topic before you display your ignorance in public.
The Bush FDA has a history of dragging feet to protect big buisness. In 2004, they almost ran one of their own vets out for blowing the whisle on the dangers of a heartworm drug for dogs. Some easy googling will tell that story. They have known all along this was in the human food chain, doing everything possible to keep the numbers of dead and sick animals down. My guess this is also in livestock feeds, like the kind they use at feed lots for fattening the cattle, diary feed. Go look at the labels of any concentrated livestock feed. Might have to hit the local feed store as the big agri companies will be changing some labeling on the web. It killed and damaged cats fast because they don’t get hay and or grass with their diet. I think the only reason that more cats died than dogs was that cats are less likely to have anything but the tainted food in the diet. Dogs are likely to have table scraps, etc. Also it seems that the canned food hit harder, and cats are more likely to eat only canned than dogs. I’m not sure that cats are any more sensitive than the rest of us, just more likely to have the tainted food the sole source of their diet.
11.) Nobody was testing for Melamine prior this, not even your trendy upper class companies. I agree with Goldy, that the FDA suspected Melamine right off the bat and for good reason. Or they were tipped by someone in agri-business who knew how easy this would be to do.
” … the USDA announced that it would pay farmers millions of dollars to destroy and dispose of thousands of hogs fed ‘salvaged’ pet food.”
Why is this a government responsibility? The taxpayers didn’t buy that feed. The farmers did. Why shouldn’t be farmers eat this expense? It’s a cost of doing business. They should call their insurance companies.
Republicans think government’s responsibility is to ladle out money to people who vote for them. I think government’s responsibility is to regulate the folks who vote for Republicans (e.g., feed suppliers and farmers) so this shit doesn’t happen in the first place.
There are few groups more solidly Republican than farmers. There are hardly any groups who pay more lip service to “self reliance” than farmers. There is no group more dependent on government handouts than farmers.
15)
Good point, but since the farmer is buying recalled pet food to feed the hogs in the first place, it might not hurt to have some sort of oversight in getting rid of them in a safe manner. The way things are going they could end up back in the cat food.
Out greatness in agriculture WAS the family farm, and that is the problem.
I say we should “water board” some folks in this administration to get some answers…since they seem to feel that this form of “questioning” isn’t a form of torture and they also feel that “quality intelligence” can be garnered from doing so.
Let’s give it a try on these greedy SOB’s.
Great job, Goldy. Thanks for making my mind up completely to become a Locavore.
Ugh..
I was never too big on the organic movement because I thought food saftey regulations provided at least a minimal level of protection against stuff like this. Pesticides don’t even bother me because before they are used, they have to pass rigorous testing to show they are safe.
But melamine? It’s processed coal. How could it be so widespread. I might have to go organic for a long while.
Daddy hits another home run! Wal-Mart stock is up again!!
This article proves the so-called “liberal media” is firmly in the grip of rightwing media owners who are more interested in perpetuating the wingnut mythos than truthful reporting.
“Tenet Faces Backlash Over Critical Memoir
“By KATHERINE SHRADER
“AP
“NEW YORK (April 29) – The backlash has built up even before the official release of former CIA Director George Tenet’s memoir, with criticism about his version of the run-up to the Iraq war, interrogation techniques and other events.
“Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Sunday disputed Tenet’s claim that the Bush administration, before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, never had a serious debate about whether Iraq posed an imminent threat or whether to tighten existing sanctions. …”
http://tinyurl.com/3ca7eu
See what I mean? Instead of reporting the substance of Tenet’s book, AP thinks the story is Rice’s CRITICISM of Tent’s criticism of the administration. What a crock!
If this reporter was honest the headline would read:
“Tenet Book Exposes Condi As Lying POS”
and the subhead would say,
“Laura Furious Over George/Condi Affair”
Oh wait, that WAS the headline in another news story I saw — in a supermarket tabloid. According to The Globe, which nobody used to take seriously but has become the only newspaper left in the U.S. that’s still doing serious journalism — George agreed to pay Laura millions to not divorce him until he leaves the White House.
This couple doesn’t just have separate bedrooms; they live in separate wings. She’s in the east wing, and he’s rightwing.
Personally, I think the former director of the CIA knows more about what went on in the CIA than Condi does. And that’s before you consider the fact she’s got a motive to lie.
If You Feed Me, I’m Yours
The Associated Press reports that Sen. John McCain has 22 pets. http://tinyurl.com/2ubxmb
Here’s another example of how the media — which is thoroughly rightwing — panders to the Bushies. Instead of saying the administration lied, which is what happened, the headline writer waters it down:
“Inaccurate statistics cited in abstinence-only education
“By Christopher Lee
“The Washington Post
“WASHINGTON — Each of these assertions turns up in federally funded abstinence-only sex-education programs: Condoms fail to prevent HIV infection 31 percent of the time during heterosexual sex. The chances of getting pregnant while using a condom are 1 in 6. And condoms break or slip off nearly 15 percent of the time.
“Each of them is wrong, says John Santelli, a pediatrician and professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.
“In a 20-page document submitted to the Department of Health and Human Services last week, Santelli detailed what he calls ‘misleading’ and ‘scientifically inaccurate’ information in three curricula used by programs that receive federal abstinence-only funding.
“His analysis accompanied a letter from the American Civil Liberties Union demanding that HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt ensure that such programs provide medically accurate information about condoms and sexually transmitted diseases, as required by federal law. ‘They have been alerted numerous times, and they haven’t done anything,’ said Ava Barbour, an ACLU staff attorney. …
“The government spends $176 million a year on abstinence programs. The materials have been the subject of political and legal battles for years, with critics, including Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., contending the Bush administration has ignored inaccuracies in the service of conservative ideology. …
“In the ACLU filing, Santelli said that the 31 percent figure regarding condoms and HIV was from a 1993 study. More recent studies show that the risk of an HIV-negative person being infected by an HIV-positive partner is reduced by 80 to 87 percent if condoms are used every time they have sex, Santelli wrote.
“Authoritative studies also show that the chances of an unintended pregnancy while using a condom are not 1 in 6, Santelli wrote, but about 2 percent over the course of a year if condoms are used correctly every time. And condoms break or slip off less than 4 percent of the time, not 15 percent, Santelli said.”
Quoted under Fair Use; for complete story and/or copyright info see http://tinyurl.com/ys4r2e
Roger Rabbit Commentary: If you want to make sure no one reads the story, use the word “statistics” in your headline.
And wingnuts claim the media is “liberal biased”? Sheesh. Who are they kidding? The rightwing bias of this so-called reporting is every bit as blatant as it is in the Tenet story I quoted above.
I agree with Richard that at least a temporary ban on imports from China is a good idea. What this whole affair points up on a much larger scale is that this constant homage to the “deregulation” mantra that’s been going on for the last 30 years has to stop. The righties started pushing it in the early 70’s, and for some inexplicable reason the Democrats have been cowed in to playing along even when they had the power to reverse the trend.
The claims made in support of “regulatory reform” have proved in virtually all cases to be completely bogus. Instead of “competition bringing more choices to the consumer”, we’ve seen industry after industry become consolodated into monopoly or oligopoly. We’ve seen e. coli burgers, mad cow, airliners crashing with unlubricated jackscrews, media consolidation and vacuous celebrity gossip passed off as “news”, collapsing bridges, tainted food, crooked banks, disposable everything and general mediocrity everywhere you look.
In direct contradiction to the claims of the right, there’s not a thing that government can do badly that private enterprise can’t screw up even worse.
You are right, #26 artfart, the lack of regulation enforcement is the problem, directly attributed to the Republicans. Everything and everyone needs to be regulated. Cells not being regulated lead to cancer, which kills, just like a lack of regulation on companies kills.
This is another of their chickens coming home to roost, just as the contaminations of the fresh produce that has happened repeatedly the last 10 years or so. I wouldn’t be surprised if terrorism is mostly caused by their tendency to get rid of regulations that control companies and agencies to keep them from abusing people.
Pitiful! The only good thing to come out of this is the boosting of organic food sales and preparing your own food from scratch. It’s the only way to, hopefully, get a decent meal.
Hey, if we all did that, it would run those companies that do these things out of business. That would be a big plus!
Grow your own non-monocropped food
I’m thinking organic and locally grown stuff is the way to go. Much more work, but at least you know what it took to grow it.
One thing I have yet to see clarified is if both melamine monomer and polymer are involved. Melamine monomer is used in inexpensive dinnerware and is probably totally harmless. The monomer from which the polymer is made is a different story. Both would show high nitrogen content and both are called melamine.
Good post, thanks for your coverage of this story. This morning I went to the FDA website and sent a comment that their failure to act has caused me to lose faith in the food supply. Here’s their comment form:
http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/qa-askco.html
@19: “I say we should “water board” some folks in this administration to get some answers…”
Interestingly enough, there are parallels here to the oft used ‘ticking time bomb’ scenario.
No food additives should be used that aren’t proven save, whatever their molecular structure is.
so how do we find out where the food in the supermarket came from? what it was fed before it was slaughtered and where that came from? it sounds like there is no way to be informed consumers until we can answer these questions.
So Moonbat!s the two questions for the day are:
1) Was 9/11 an inside job with the melting of the I-80, I580, & I880 connector due to an outside gasoline explosion and resulting fire?
2) Who won the Iraq was since Senator Scary Reid claims we lost? With every war there is a winner and a loser. We all know Clueless and Gloomy Gus Used Full Toilet Roll Stupid are the LOSERS here, so who won since we lost?
erratum …Iraq war…
This past week we “celebrated” the three week anniversary since Mrs Stretch Pelosi was conducting foreign policy with Syria, and we see she failed miserably.
1) Israeli soldiers are still in custody
2) Hamas still sending rockets into Israel – last set sent on Tuesday
3) Assad sends to prison political enemies
4) Terrorist offices are still in Damascus
5) 80% of terrorist Iraqi suicide bombers come through Syria – US Military
6) Not authorized to carry messages to Israel
She proved terrorist engagements work! Must be glad to be a Moonbat!
Please Mrs Pelosi – Go to Iran! Stay there!
I suggest we throw China out of the WTO. Remove China from MFNS. Add tariffs to Chinese imports.
Yeah that’s the ticket!
Maybe this is an obtuse way to get Americans to eat healthier.
As you can see eating pork hasn’t improved the IQ level of Clueless or Gloomy Gus Used Full Toilet Roll Stupid.
PUDDYBUD: THE FOOL OF THE TOOLS: DRUDGE, REED IRVINE, BRENT ‘HOZELL, CAPTAIN “IN BED”, INSTATWIT, ETC, ETC.
THE LATEST LIE HE’S EATEN: SOROS FUNDS MEDIA MATTERS.
FROM DRUDGE’S TOILET TO HIS BREAKFAST PLATE, PUDDYBUD FEEDS ON RIGHT WING BULLSHIT.
Perhaps melamine is not particularly toxic to humans, as it obviously is to animals. There are lots of instances of this type of thing. They admit this has been going on for years in China, so this may very well be. Melamine has been considered nontoxic per the article, and for humans it probably is.
This is not to condone it. This is not to side with the biased media or the lax and dangerour FDA. I wish they would remove most of the crap they put into foods. I wish all farming was organic. I just don’t want people all worried and in a panic when it does not appear to be a crisis for humans at this stage.
PudWax: Who is politically to blame is less important at this point than in figuring out how far the contamination goes.
But I see by your comments that the issue of taking personal responsibility, as Republicans demand of everyone but corporations and themselves, has yet to cross your tiny wingnut mind.
William F. Buckley, Jr. is agreeing with the Rabbit:
The political problem of the Bush administration is grave, possibly beyond the point of rescue. The opinion polls are savagely decisive on the Iraq question. About 60 percent of Americans wish the war ended — wish at least a timetable for orderly withdrawal. What is going on in Congress is in the nature of accompaniment. The vote in Congress is simply another salient in the war against war in Iraq. Republican forces, with a couple of exceptions, held fast against the Democrats’ attempt to force Bush out of Iraq even if it required fiddling with the Constitution. President Bush will of course veto the bill, but its impact is critically important in the consolidation of public opinion. It can now accurately be said that the legislature, which writes the people’s laws, opposes the war.
Meanwhile, George Tenet, former head of the CIA, has just published a book which seems to demonstrate that there was one part ignorance, one part bullheadedness, in the high-level discussions before war became policy. Mr. Tenet at least appears to demonstrate that there was nothing in the nature of a genuine debate on the question. What he succeeded in doing was aborting a speech by Vice President Cheney which alleged a Saddam/al Qaeda relationship which had not in fact been established. …
But beyond affirming executive supremacy in matters of war, what is George Bush going to do? It is simply untrue that we are making decisive progress in Iraq. …
General Petraeus is a wonderfully commanding figure. But if the enemy is in the nature of a disease, he cannot win against it. Students of politics ask then the derivative question: How can the Republican party, headed by a president determined on a war he can’t see an end to, attract the support of a majority of the voters? General Petraeus, in his Pentagon briefing on April 26, reported persuasively that there has been progress, but cautioned, “I want to be very clear that there is vastly more work to be done across the board and in many areas, and again I note that we are really just getting started with the new effort.”
The general makes it a point to steer away from the political implications of the struggle, but this cannot be done in the wider arena. There are grounds for wondering whether the Republican party will survive this dilemma.
http://article.nationalreview......E5OWVkOTc=
Safety is a Mirage
Go organic!
Really? How much do you know about the content of “organic” foods. What if they are grown in selenium rich soil, is that OK? How about fluoride rich soil?
Ever hear about the problems with organic peanut butter … likely to be contaminated by aflatoxin a potent carcinogen unless specially stored.
Here are a few FoodFacts:
1. In the wild, humans lived for only about 40 years. And primitive peoples are not esp healthy, depite an “organic” small farmer environment. Evolution had no reason to select us to find a diet etc. to last any longer.
2. Modern agriculture (modern meaning anything for the last few hundred years) does terrible things .. monoculture of plants and animals, concentration of plants and beasts in small areas, etc. Asa result many farm animals have endemic viruses. Shall we stop mass producing chicken?
3. “organic” is largely a myth. AIDS probably arose because humans ate organic monkey meat. Which do you prefer … cow dung or pure nitrates as a fertilizer?
So what to do?
1, decrease the population to sustainable levels.
IDEA: PEOPLE CREDITS … I will guarantee not to have any more kids if you pay me enough!
IDEA: Buy sterilizations! The ultimate antiabortion step!
2. INCREASE funding for the FDA. Seriously, our ONLY defense is surveillance and food research. The FDA and the Center for Disease Control are at least as important as the Army to our national defense.
IDEA: label foods with a “safe to eat” rating based on how much we KNOW. Of course this would largely mean all the crap in the “health food stores” would be LOW RATED!
3. Play the Japan game. Japan protects its farmers (NOT ITS PUBLIC) by very cautious laws on what can and can not be imported. We could do the same. E.g. any evidence eof use of human feces as fertilizer or cohabitation by humans and domestic animals would rule out importation from places like China.
4. Encourage crop and animal species diversity. Are you worried about food? What happens when ALL the world is eating 3 kinds of cloned rice? The PROBABILITY of a bad genetic event is close to a certainty under these conditions. We have a major need for a systematic effort to maintain diversity on the genomes of our food.
More at SeattleJew
Puddybud @ 36:
That’s just plain stupid. We’ve given George W. Bush 4 full year to get the Iraw War right and you epect Speaker Pelosi to clean up the Republican’s mess in one visit.
Grow up.
The truth, if you really believed in the concept, is all around you and the truth is George W. Bush, the Republican leadership, and conservative supporters everywhere are responsible for all the deaths and injuries suffered by American soldiers for your willingness to follow a liar into war and your continued support of them in the face of the truth.
Republicans disgust me.
What does Chinese capitalism have to do with it? Sounds like good old USA outsourced capitalism to me.
grinninglibber, goldy et al:
the ny times article talks about urea being used in the past. what would the health effects be from this — kidney problems i imagine. how long have pet food and animal feed producers been getting ingredients from china?
cats often suffer kidney failure when old. could this have been going on for years?
Thanks for all your research. I have a couple of questions:
1) It sounds to me that wheat gluten/melamine is not something that just happened a couple of months ago. Why have there been no reports of earlier dog and cat deaths?
2) What happened to the person who ate some dog food and became extremely ill? Was it the melamine that caused the illness, and if so, it would indicate that this is not harmless to humans.
Mr. Pope. Good to have you back. Who was that person parroting talking points, anyway?
Puddybud:
GBS has covered the ground pretty thoroughly, but that’s never stopped me from putting in my two cents, so here goes.
Let’s follow the reasoning here. Three weeks is long enough to tell if a particular technique for solving international differences is working? Well, I disagree, but let’s see where that concept leaves us in Iraq.
The war has been going on for more than four years, and it’s still a mess. Guess that one didn’t work.
The surge has been going on for more than four months. Another failure?
Shall we continue? Ok.
We “held the line” against Syria for over six years under GWB, and that didn’t work. All of those issues you listed were in place long before Ms. Pelosi tried talking to the Syrians, so if her initiative was a failure, what do you call the previous policy? For me, the words “debacle” and “disaster” come immediately to mind. At least she tried something different.
Insanity (n) Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
PUDDY’S BEEN LYIN’ ABOUT HARRY REID.
OH EXCUSE ME. TO LIE HE’D HAVE TO KNOW THE TRUTH BUT HE’S WILLFULLY IGNORANT WHICH IS A NICE WAY TO SAY HE’S FULL OF SHIT.
AND JUDGING FROM HIS READING MATERIAL, HE LIKES IT THAT WAY.
Who was that person parroting talking points
PUD E. BUD. PUDDYLIAR. PUDDYWHACKO. PUDDYLOSER.
While I understand the sentiment, the US companies were the target of the deception, and at least some of them have shown a rather unexpectedly responsible attitude towards the whole thing.
That is one of the potential up sides to capitalism. When we can make it in the companies’ best interest to act responsibly, they will do so.
We Americans will accept all sorts of garbage in our own food, but mess with our pets, and we come absolutely unglued. Frankly, I doubt that this would have caused nearly as much anger if the adulterated gluten had found its way into junior’s Sugar Blasted Koko Krunchies.
We already knew that stuff was bad for us.
There has been some evidence of high levels of kidney failure in pets for some time now. No, this isn’t something brand new.
Unfortunately, as housecats are notorious for kidney problems, it’s difficult to determine whether the death is due to melamine, or just normal causes.
As for an individual becoming ill after eating dog food, that may simply be because dog food isn’t designed for humans, plus the fact that a human that is eating dog food has other problems as well. Either poverty, which would indicate a poor diet overall, or lack of discernment about food, which means that other things not meant for human consumption may also have been ingested.
Melamine is not considered a food product, and the real problem appears to be a widespread practice of deliberate cheating among Chinese companies. The melamine has been used as a way of decieving the most widely used test for protein in grain products. Other products, such as urea, have also been used in the past, but the Chinese government had a simple test for that, so they went to another method, adding melamine.
The underlying problem is a lack of accountability among the Chinese producers. Some of the heads of these companies need to spend long periods in Chinese prisons. If any US companies are found to be complicit, then the responsible people there need to spend long periods in Chinese prisons, which I presume are somewhat less pleasant than “Club Fed”.
Cutting off trade in any adulterated items would be a very good first step in encouraging the Chinese government to take the necessary steps, but due to the fact that the Chinese government holds much of the nation’s debt, it may not be possible.
And for that little problem, we can thank the current administration.
42 Buckley has been speaking quietly in this vein for some time, and his voice is becoming louder as more current and former professionals in the intelligence community break their silence. These people are among other things very good at keeping their mouths shut about nasty and embarrassing things out of duty to protect our country. They’re starting to realize that instead they’ve been keeping secrets to save an incompetent president’s butt.
Please do not feed the trolls. The Bush-run FDA does nothing to protect Americans from deliberately tainted food in the holy name of ‘free trade’ with a ‘preferred nation’ status. Someone had to have known. Those bastards deserve the worst.
“Puddybud’s Who Left the Reservation says:
This past week we “celebrated” the three week anniversary since Mrs Stretch Pelosi was conducting foreign policy with Syria, and we see she failed miserably.”
Yeah, and tomorrow we celebrate “Mission Accomplished Day” and George W. Bush gets to celebrate by vetoing the “emergency funding bill” for the troops he seemed to forget about last February when he submitted his budget to congress.
How many military funerals will conservaties be attending in “celebration” of their failed “Mission Accomplished Day” in Iraq?
JohnBarelli@51 John Barelli said:
“The underlying problem is a lack of accountability among the Chinese producers. Some of the heads of these companies need to spend long periods in Chinese prisons.”
Sadly, that’s not how they do things. If the offense is deemed grave, they simply put a bullet in the back of the offenders head and charge the offenders family for the bullet.
Draconian, but there’s little recidivism.
Answer to 55:
Exactly ZERO because they’ll be too drunked up to care!!
TFF @ 56:
Yeah, like some Chinese business leader is going to be shot for poisioning America’s food supply!!
Oh sure they’d get the hot lead blue plate special if they advocated a free and separate state for Taiwan, but uping profits on the lives of American pets and people, you’re only fooling yourself.
@58 Umm. . .the Reformers haven’t gotten a lot of play lately, but they’re still there. . .if the free flow of trade is effected, even a little, it will reveal the precarious position of the Central Bank, which is estimated to have a “book” of bad debts totalling above twenty percent. You’d better believe that will get the upper Politburo agitated, and they will serve your “hot lead blue plate special” to those responsible.
I believe their plan is more to bankrupt us than poison.
Fortunately the FDA reacts more calmly and rationally than Goldy. Obviously food contamination is a bad thing. And the Chinese have little regard for human life and regulation. But prudence dictates a rational analysis of the situation and not scaremongering. If China has been illicitly adding melamine and other chemicals to the food supply, then we should stop that. Especially if they have no value or even toxicity. But why the sudden need to find crisis? If this is indeed really bad, good that we caught it, and maybe it makes us more aware of food contamination. But there are millions of ways to do improper or dangerous things to effect a lot of people, and there is no need for overreaction just because we found one of those mistakes.
Goldy has obviously been so entranced by Al Gore and other hysteria peddling that he is convinced that this is indeed a crisis. But if it were, wouldn’t people be dropping dead in detectable numbers? And how do we know there’s not more to the pet food contamination than just melamine? Complex forensics between different species and many different foods and chemicals takes time. And that’s time that a hysterical blogger looking for the big story and post topics is not willing to allow.
Fortunately the FDA reacts more calmly and rationally than Goldy.
SO I SUPPOSE THE NEXT TIME A COUNTRY LIKE CHINA INJECTS JUNK INTO THE FOOD SUPPLY WE’RE SUPPOSED TO BE JUST BE CALM AND SOBER, DON’T HARRASS THE POOR FDA.
YEAH, JUST ENOUGH TIME FOR THE PROFITEERS TO COVER THEIR TRACKS AND SMOOTH THINGS OVER SO THEY’RE NOT HELD ACCOUNTABLE.
MORE RIGHT-WING IDIOCY.
Goldy,
I agree with you, but keep the focus on processed foods, not on tainted feeds. What the FDA is saying re melamine in pork is actually reasonable. Melamine is a compound that is going to be mostly excreted via the kidneys. There is going to be very little residue in the tissues. Yes, we need to eliminate this adulterant from the food supply, but consuming foods made directly with the adulterated vegetable proteins is a much more significant worry.
For once, I find myself in agreement with Richard Pope. Chinese agricultural products really shouldn’t be allowed until they can demonstrate some oversight of their own.
Re the note at the bottom of your post: the International Herald Tribune still has the NY Times story on-line. In fact, as of now, it’s #1 on their “most e-mailed” stories list. It’s on the IHT site here:
http://www.iht.com/articles/20.....30food.php
TFF @ 59:
Well, OK, no sense in arguing over when and where a rouge government will execute it’s citizens in China when we have to contend with it here.
The only way the Chinese can bankrupt the US is if we keep electing Republicans who have no problem borrowing trillions of dollars from hostile, foreign nations.
It was nice having a responsible president PAY down the national debt the way Clinton did.
Bush is the worst president ever — unless your name is Osama bin Laden, then you’re a big fan of Bush and doing business with his family.
goldy……..
““It just saves money,” says a manager at an animal feed factory here. “Melamine scrap is added to animal feed to boost the protein level.” “HERE” must be referring to CHINA.
it doesn’t actually boost the protein level….it just makes it “APPEAR” to have higher protein levels….when ‘sample’ tested….it doesn’t actually raise protein levels.
so this is criminal activity on the part of CHINA we are looking at here.
a couple of things though…melamine is non volatile which actually means that it does not go into a vapor state [think evaporation] and has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH BEING EXPLOSIVE. okay?
cats have a bigger problem with melamine than most other animals because they tend to form kidney calculi more easily and that’s when melamine can be lethal.
“t may make for entertaining TV, but popular shows like CSI get forensic toxicology exactly backwards. You don’t run a substance through a mass spectrometer and 30 seconds later get a complete readout of its chemical makeup. Rather, you painstakingly look for specific chemicals or groups of chemicals one at a time, until you find the offending toxin. Once you get beyond the basic “tox screen,” forensics is as much art as science — investigators use evidence and intuition to narrow the search to those compounds that are most likely to be the culprit.”
this is an overly simplistic view and partially incorrect. number one…it can take up to half an hour in a regular mass spec., the FDA is using the half million dollar one [called a triple MS]that takes literally seconds. and that’s after the sample is prepped using gas chromatography or [more likely in this case] LCMS.
it is fun to watch CSI use our equipment though……:)
but, as far as your saying that they have to ‘know’ what they are looking for. well…sorta. there are classes of chemicals,drugs, etc. and you would “know” what to look for based on what the data was. such as ,in this case, you have animals dying [ of renal failure] and a high protein level. maybe someone squealed…but more likely the problem pointed it’s finger at the culprit.
and …i can’t say this enough…..melamine is NOT A FOOD ADDITIVE. so for the person that was saying that in the comments, that is completely inaccurate and this group of people here don’t need anyone yelling fire in the theater….in case you couldn’t guess that for yourself.
so goldy…you have hit upon our specialty.
and goldy….first you were pissed that the FDA wasn’t investigating and now you’re going to conspiracy theories?
look…real world alert…..YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW….[and neither does the FDA…as much as we would like them to].look, i am not a particular fan of the the FDA in it’s present [and past ] state, BUT,the FDA can only prevent so many things even if they were everywhere at once. which is impossible and will never happen. it’s there to also ‘catch’ things like this.
do we need tighter controls? you betcha…..did the FDA do this on purpose [as some of your more idiotic commenter’s have suggested]??? don’t be stupid.
this whole thing is a result of CRIMINAL ACTIVITY in CHINA and needs to be seriously addressed.
does the FDA need tighter controls and more inspection and testing…absolutely.
we should immediately ban anything that is being imported from china that might be used in any food, drug, or cosmetic.
but, please, don’t politicize this. that’s just stupid.trust me, if anything, the FDA is a wee bit better today than 10 years, 20 years etc. ago.
FYI: Goldy’s role in uncovering this mammoth hazard to the health of American consumers was picked up overnight on DailyKos and this morning on Seattle food blog Cornichon.
“but, please, don’t politicize this. that’s just stupid.trust me, if anything, the FDA is a wee bit better today than 10 years, 20 years etc. ago.
If christmasghost says things are better now than 10 years ago during Clinton’s Presidency, then we all had better be nervous because one thing is for sure:
NOTHING BUSH HAS DONE IS BETTER THAN WHAT PRESIDENT CLINTON DID!!!
NOTHING!!
christmasSOLDIERSghost!
Your support of President Bush and anything Republcian helped kill over 100 of our brave men and women this month.
Keep their ghosts in your thoughts, you put them there!!
Their blood is on your hands. Their lives cut short, kids without dads, mothers, lost husbands, wives, uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, all good things lost because you wouldn’t and still won’t respect the truth that George W. Bush’s lied and brave Americans died.
Enjoy your “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED DAY”
What a hoot! Upon reading that some assholes are, basically, grinding up plastic and introducing it into the food supply through animal feed, the corporate apoligists jump on the obvious ass cover of “minimal” risk to health.
Get your heads out of the ground (and back in your asses.)
ronald….exactly what was goldy’s ROLE in this?
really…what? parroting a story that had already hit the fan?
Clueless@39:
I didn’t get it from Drudge.
1) You are such a tool
2) You are such a fool
3) You need to go back to school
4) Your entries lack being kool
http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/009575.php
DUNCE!
“Media Matters has a post up today explaining that
Internet gossip Matt Drudge has claimed that Media Matters for America is a “Soros operation.”
In fact, Media Matters has never received funding from progressive philanthropist George Soros.
Looking at the non-authoritative but informative Sourcewatch entry on Media Matters we get:
Funded with “more than $2 million in donations from wealthy liberals.” “Among Mr. Brock’s donors is Leo Hindery, Jr., the former cable magnate; Susie Tompkins Buell, who is co-founder of the fashion company Esprit and is close to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, and Ms. Buell’s husband Mark; and James C. Hormel, a San Francisco philanthropist whose appointment as ambassador to Luxembourg was delayed for a year and a half in the late 1990’s by conservative lawmakers protesting what they called his promotion of a ‘gay lifestyle.’ [5]
Media Matters for America is funded in part by the Democracy Alliance.
And following the Sourcewatch link to ‘Democracy Alliance’ we get:
“Members of the Democracy Alliance include billionaires like George Soros and his son Jonathan Soros, former Rockefeller Family Fund president Anne Bartley, San Francisco Bay Area donors Susie Tompkins Buell and Mark Buell, Hollywood director Rob Reiner, Taco Bell heir Rob McKay … as well as New York financiers like Steven Gluckstern.” [3]
Conservative site ‘Discover the Networks’ says:
Media Matters has not always been forthcoming about its high-profile backers. In particular, the group has long labored to obscure any financial ties to George Soros. But in March 2003, the Cybercast News Service (CNS) detailed the copious links between Media Matters and several Soros “affiliates” – among them MoveOn.org, the Center for American Progress, and Peter Lewis. Confronted with this story, a spokesman for the organization explained that “Media Matters for America has never received funding directly from George Soros” (emphasis added), a transparent evasion.”
GWBush @ 67,68
I don’t think ChristmasGhost was trying to say that the political leaders overseeing the FDA are better now than 10 years ago (Bill Clinton) or 20 years ago (Ronald Reagan). She was saying that the scientists and equipment are better now than in the past.
Actually, ChristmasGhost is making a political issue out of this, just the same way most everyone else here is. She says “we should immediately ban anything that is being imported from china that might be used in any food, drug, or cosmetic.” And that decision has to be made by our political leaders, not by our scientists.
GBS and other Moonbat!s who decry Bush vetoing the emergency funding bill:
1) Remove the 20 Billion $$$ (pounds) of pork
2) Remove the unconscionable time table even CNN reporters in Iraq are saying is stupid.
Need the link GBS?
I thought the new donkocraptic congress said they would be different. They would not be making pork projects.
Another words we have been faked out by the federal government the FDA (another corrupt organization) the
manufacturers the corporations etc.. the people faked out
again ….
To eat healthier ? … when in the meantime all those who
thought they were eating food enriched with nutritional
protein are not …
And the FDA has the adacity to criticize those alternative
and homeopathic organizations that preach good health and
wellness outside the framework of corporate america and the
FDA..
Clueless: Still drinking that warm sticky, salty white sauce produced by Kos every .8 seconds huh?
Amaaaaaaaaaaaaaazing! Just like your hero George Soros. You need to see what he told CBS what he did to his Jewish compatriots at 14?
PudWax: Who is politically to blame is less important at this point than in figuring out how far the contamination goes.
But I see by your comments that the issue of taking personal responsibility, as Republicans demand of everyone but corporations and themselves, has yet to cross your tiny psychopathic mind.
Okay, I’m not going to chime in on the politics of all of what’s happened, as we’ve got problems to solve here. Massive ones that have taken YEARS to get us to this stage. We need a major revamp of the system and at a miminum, a ban on imported Chinese rice concentrate and wheat gluten…but then again, I wasn’t going to wane political.
What I was going to comment on was the fact I’m SO happy to have found this blog and the links to where the FDA has admitted this cr** has been most likely going on since August 2006. About a year ago, my Samoyed dog was a little on the hefty side and I needed to get him on a weight loss regimen. Long story short, I put him on a dry food with a little canned in it for him to enjoy. It was one of the higher end Menu Foods produced products. I took two weeks to swap him onto this diet, and as he ate more of the new diet, he became violently ill. It was obvious what was making him sick. I immediately stopped feeding him that diet.
That was in April 2006. The FDA states that back to August of 2006 that this supplier has been a vendor…according to the Times article, it’s so widespread a practice that any product from that part of the world is most likely laced with melamine or melamine by-products.
All I know is from what I experienced. My dog is still with me, thank God. He’s a healthy six year old, active and the center of our family’s little universe. The food was contaminated, and I’m taking my dog to the vet in the morning to document his past illness as being part of the melamine poisoning. I won’t be seeking any damages for it, but for those who have lost pets from this, perhaps this will help them.
I shudder to think what else in the pipeline is poison – I think the dog’s food is safe now, but what about those ribs we made a couple of weekends ago on the grill? How about that chicken sandwich I had for lunch? Are any of us really safe now, or are our darling companions indeed the “canaries in the coalmine”? It’s time to put politics aside and agree there’s a problem that must be fixed NOW. If we just sit around and argue and do nothing about this, it’s a perfect venue for a terrorist to get in and kill a bunch of Americans. We MUST shut down this window of opportunity and make things safe for all of us again NOW.
richard…….i was hardly making a political issue out of this. i,frankly, don’t even know where you would get that idea. banning the items i was talking about is a health/common sense/ science decision…don’t you think?
simply because it would have to be done by the government does not make it political……the solution would just have to involve politicians.
when i said people should not make this “political” i meant the usual conspiracy crap blaming a PARTY for something, instead of acknowledging the problem [and the real culprits versus….the nasty republicans did it….and if they had, BTW, i would point a finger at them]and fixing it, from both ends.
yes…the science has gotten better….but the FDA’s bureaucracy is still the biggest problem.the political leaders [as you put it] are hardly over seeing the FDA. that is not the way it works at all. like most huge government bureaucracies it ‘runs’ itself…a bit like a runaway train. they don’t change scientists there with the changes that take place in the white house for instance….and i can’t believe that so many nuts here think they do.
for all of you that want to just bitch about the government…where were you and your bitching 10 years ago? 8? 20? because, the FDA was exactly the same then….and you didn’t seem to have a problem.
i KNOW [and so do all of you that are willing to be honest] that if this had happened under clinton or carter [and it did by the way…you just didn’t know….] the first thing goldy and his peeps would have come out with were theories about how it wasn’t his fault.
and ,of course, it wouldn’t be. because the reality is, china has committed a crime against us and their own people too. it’s china’s fault.
but here are all these people screaming that we should get our own government. maybe you should get out more….all of you.
this finger pointing, whining, and complacency is so counter productive that it ceased to be even mildly amusing a long time ago….
christmasSOLDIERSghost:
your side started it, you’ve heavily participated in it, sweetcheeks.
If you can’t stand the heat stay out of the kitche, bitch.
GBS….as usual, you fail to even make a point. what else is new?
waste of space…………
“your side started it”
what “side” would that be, and do YOU even know what the hell you are talking about?
however…people like you are why the democrats have ZERO chance of getting into the white house [unless they are on a tour that is]….really, do you think that the american people want to put finger pointing, do-nothing children in there at this point in time?
isn’t going to happen babycakes……….
I think the FDA does a great job protecting our food supply from foreign chemicals/substances (except for that Monsanto growth hormone in our Milk supply…) Well at least they do a great job keeping genetically engineered foods out of our system (er, that’s France…) Well at least they do a good job on inspecting foreign foods coming into our market (except for that little China country…) F*** it – I’m going to McDonalds!
Profits. Profits. Profits. When will North America wake up and start producing and consuming its own food products and all its derivatives. People are complaining about Global warming but continues to buy Chinese made products that were produced using coal burning power plants. If you go to a Walmart, Sears, etc., what you will find are mostly made in China. Because of this, what do we get? Employment problems, huge trade deficits, agressive Chinese trade policies, air/water pollution on a global scale. It would be nice to see more made in North America products again.