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   Chickens & Hogs have eaten contaminated Feed

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Topic: Chickens & Hogs have eaten contaminated Feed (Read 428 times)

Rhune
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Chickens & Hogs have eaten contaminated Feed
« on: May 2^nd, 2007, 8:32pm »

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Chickens Now Contaminated by Melamine
By Adam Voiland
Posted 5/1/07
Some 3 million broiler chickens from 30 farms in Indiana have eaten feed containing melaminethe industrial chemical that gained notoriety in March as a toxic pet-food contaminantand entered the human food system, government officials announced today. The Food and Drug Administration has decided not to issue recalls of the contaminated chicken, noting that the chemical is not thought to be harmful to people and is highly diluted. The news comes several days after the FDA said it had quarantined 6,000 affected hogs as a precaution, even though it isn't clear yet that the meat had been contaminated. The California Department of Food and Agriculture reports that it has contacted 22 people who purchased pork suspected of contamination, most of whom have eaten the meat without any ill effect.

Scientists aren't sure about the potential health risks for humans, since very little research exists on the potential impact of the chemical, which seems to have caused liver failure in at least 16 cats and sickened thousands of other pets. "We're still trying to understand this stuff," says Martin Cole, director of the National Center for Food Safety and Technology, a research consortium composed of scientists from academia, the FDA, and industry.

Cole acknowledges that it's possible the toxicity in pets may be a result of interactions with cyanuric acid, a chemical related to melamine found in some of the animals who got sick. The pet-food scare began March 16 when Menu Foods Inc. announced a voluntary recall of certain wet cat foods. Since then, over 100 pet-food products made by 11 manufacturers have been recalled.

Consumers who are concerned about the possibility of eating chicken or pork should be aware that the FDA believes that any risk of harm is minuscule and says that no additional melamine-laced products are now entering the food supply. Those who are wondering what to feed their pets should check the recall list posted on the FDA website or the website of the American Veterinary Medical Association for updates. The American Veterinary Medical Association reminds pet owners that only 1 percent of commercially available pet foods have been affected.

Binzhou Futian Biology Technology Co. and imported by Wilbur-Ellis. It's possible that other melamine-spiked vegetable proteins have been used in other products such as pizzas, protein bars, and baby formula, and the FDA is continuing to investigate this possibility. In the meantime, the Center for Science in the Public Interest has called for a total ban on grains from China.

"We have a problem. The FDA, which has control over about 80 percent of our food supply, is able to inspect only 1 percent of it. Our system is out of date, and it's broken," says Michael Doyle, director of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia.

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Rhune
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Re: Chickens & Hogs have eaten contaminated Fe
« Reply #1 on: May 2^nd, 2007, 8:34pm »

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Melamine unlikely to pose threat to people in U.S., toxicologists say
By Donald G. McNeil Jr.
Published: May 2, 2007

NEW YORK: Toxicologists monitoring the U.S. food supply for traces of melamine after it was found in imported ingredients in pet food that has killed at least 16 dogs and cats and sickened thousands of others said that even if there were small amounts of it in the food supply, it would be unlikely to pose much of a threat to humans.

Sampling thus far by the Food and Drug Administration for melamine, which has also been detected in chicken feed on some farms in Indiana, has not turned up the chemical in food meant for humans, and the trace amounts found in some poultry feed - and hog feed - would presumably be excreted or broken down by the animals before they were slaughtered, scientists and federal officials said Tuesday.

Also, a survey of poison control centers, veterans' hospitals and a sample of private hospitals across the country by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found no increase in reports of kidney diseases, the most likely indicator of melamine poisoning, said Bernadette Burden, a CDC spokeswoman.

How the chemical - found in wheat gluten imported from China - could have poisoned cats and dogs remains something of a mystery, scientists said, because tests done decades ago on rats concluded that it was not very toxic. "Even when rats were loaded up with quite a lot, it caused stones or tumors over time, not acute kidney failure," said John Groves, a chemistry professor at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey.

Other chemists speculated that the melamine could have been changed by the cooking of the pet food, by metabolism by bacteria or through combination with other, still unknown chemicals.

Melamine is a simple organic molecule that can be extracted from oil or coal, and is used as a resin in making plastics. It is found in plates, countertops, cabinet facings, even children's erasers.

It contains large amounts of nitrogen. For that reason, it has apparently been used as a fertilizer, though that would presumably be harmless because plants would take up only the free nitrogen.

But in China, ground-up scraps from plastic-making have been added to grain and byproducts, presumably to fool buyers into thinking they are getting a more nutritious product, because crude tests for protein in grain do not test for protein molecules but for nitrogen, which proteins also have in abundance.

Some of those grain products have been sold for use in pet food in the United States. Last week, the drug agency said it would start requiring importers to provide proof of the safety of many more ingredients, including glutens and proteins of wheat, rice, corn, soy and mung beans.

Officials from the drug agency and the Agriculture Department estimated Tuesday that up to three million young chickens on farms in Indiana had eaten feed contaminated with pet food containing melamine or related compounds in February. Most were slaughtered, sold and presumably eaten, said Kenneth Peterson, assistant administrator for field operations with the Food Safety and Inspection Service.

Even in those chickens, or in hogs on other farms, independent toxicologists and drug agency and Agriculture Department officials said, it was highly unlikely that the melamine could concentrate in amounts that could be harmful to humans.

It would be mixed with other feeds, and much of it would be metabolized by the animals and excreted. And it is not stored in fat as, for example, pesticides are. Also, most humans are not strictly carnivores, as cats are, so they would get lower doses.

"The dilution levels are enormous," David Acheson, the drug agency's assistant commissioner for food protection, said Tuesday. "When you multiply it all together, we think the likelihood of human illness is very low."

Two drug agency employees arrived this week in China, an agency official said Tuesday. But the May Day holiday, which lasts all week there, could slow progress, though Beijing had agreed to make an official available, said Walter Batts, the drug agency's deputy director for international relations.

David Barboza contributed reporting from Zhangqiu, China, and Alexei Barrionuevo from Chicago.

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Rhune
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Re: Chickens & Hogs have eaten contaminated Fe
« Reply #2 on: May 2^nd, 2007, 8:36pm »

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on May 2^nd, 2007, 8:34pm, Rhune wrote:

Melamine is a simple organic molecule that can be extracted from oil or coal, and is used as a resin in making plastics. It is found in plates, countertops, cabinet facings, even children's erasers.

It contains large amounts of nitrogen. For that reason, it has apparently been used as a fertilizer, though that would presumably be harmless because plants would take up only the free nitrogen.

But in China, ground-up scraps from plastic-making have been added to grain and byproducts, presumably to fool buyers into thinking they are getting a more nutritious product, because crude tests for protein in grain do not test for protein molecules but for nitrogen, which proteins also have in abundance.

Some of those grain products have been sold for use in pet food in the United States. Last week, the drug agency said it would start requiring importers to provide proof of the safety of many more ingredients, including glutens and proteins of wheat, rice, corn, soy and mung beans.

So the answer is that it was *deliberately* put into the food...

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Bumper
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Re: Chickens & Hogs have eaten contaminated Fe
« Reply #3 on: May 3^rd, 2007, 1:00pm »

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on May 2^nd, 2007, 8:36pm, Rhune wrote:

So the answer is that it was *deliberately* put into the food...

Call me suspicious, but IMHO there's a whole lot more to this. We have been "Pinged" to see just how far, just how deep, someone (some other country) could penetrate the infastructure/food supply of this country before it was detected. This was NO accident. :no:

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If U R reading these old posts, know that we were once a great, active cyber-community, but as in all things..Time moves on. This is now a Ghost Town.

Rhune
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Re: Chickens & Hogs have eaten contaminated Fe
« Reply #4 on: May 4^th, 2007, 9:06am »

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I'm with ya...

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