I once thought it was a shame that the first huge melamine contamination scandal involved pet food. Surely if it had been found in food for human consumption first -- especially infant formula or baby food -- it would have been taken more seriously.
Then it turned up in livestock feed and from there, in the human food chain, and nothing changed. There was no question, none, that melamine and cyanuric acid had been added to protein powders in China for years, and no reason to suppose those powders ended up only in pet food and livestock feed -- and even if they did, they still ended up in the meat from those animals, including some livestock being fed salvaged pet food. But the response was no different than when the contaminants were found only in pet food.
Those of us writing in the pet media weren't alone in sounding the alarm about the implications of the pet food recall for the human food supply. Marion Nestle, David Goldstein over at Huffington Post, and Daily Kos environmental diarist DeepHarm all wrote about the connections early on.
Now we know that melamine has turned up in all kinds of foods, including chocolate, coffee, yogurt and other dairy products, frozen pizza, and, worst of all, in infant formula that has killed babies in China.
Now, melamine has been found in eggs. From the New York Times:
Hong Kong food inspectors have found eggs imported from northeast China to be contaminated with high levels of melamine, the toxic industrial additive at the heart of an adulteration scandal in Chinese milk products.
The findings, reported over the weekend, have raised new concerns that a far wider array of China-produced foods than previously believed could be contaminated with melamine, which has already sickened more than 50,000 children in China and led to at least four deaths.
Scientists in China worry that in addition to being used to adulterate dairy supplies, melamine may have been intentionally added to animal feed in China, according to a report published on Sunday in South China Morning Post. Tainted chicken and possibly fish and hog feed could result in poisonous meat and seafood, it said.
I had to laugh at the idea that this was "a far wider array" of foods than "previously believed." I previously believed it, and so did most of you, and a lot of other observers as well.
So why is it still like swimming through mud to get the media to pay attention to this issue? And forget the FDA or any other government trade agency. Asian and European countries are banning, heavily restricting, and doing widespread testing of foods from China, but the United States? No can do.
Our food safety system isn't just in need of an overhaul; it needs to be re-conceived and built from the ground up. Free markets need to be willing to put their money where their mouth is and demonstrate the safety of their products and their imports, and not just tell us to trust them.
Ronald Reagan, the great deity of the "small government" folks, under whose leadership federal agencies like FDA began to be gutted in the first place, once said, "Trust, but verify." Fine, I'd like to.
But it's science and testing, not corporate spin and ad campaigns, that can tell us if the foods we're eating are safe or not; this isn't something consumers have the ability to figure out in the supermarket. Melamine is invisible, whether it's in eggs or baby food or kibble.
We need strong food testing standards, based on science and public health, not corporate protectionism. I'll never forget the FDA saying, in multiple press conferences and in response to direct questions from me and other journalists, that they knew other companies whose products were found to be contaminated or who had purchased contaminated ingredients, but they wouldn't disclose them. They were guarding not the public health, as is their mission, but corporations.
That has to end. I'd say "before it's too late," but not only thousands of pets and other animals, but human beings -- infants -- have been killed, and tens of thousands sickened. For them, it's already too late.
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