Current News |
Our Home-Grown Melamine
Problem
By JAMES E. McWILLIAMS
Published: November 17, 2008
Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/opinion/17mcwilliams.html
CHINA’S food supply appears to be awash
in the industrial chemical melamine.
Dangerous levels have been detected not
only in milk and eggs, but also in
chicken feed and wheat gluten, meaning
that melamine is almost impossible to
avoid in processed foods. Melamine in
baby formula has killed at least four
infants in China and sickened tens of
thousands more.
In response, the United States has
blasted lax Chinese regulations, while
the Food and Drug Administration, in a
rare move, announced last week that
Chinese food products containing milk
would be detained at the border until
they were proved safe.
For all the outrage about Chinese
melamine, what American consumers and
government agencies have studiously
failed to scrutinize is how much
melamine has pervaded our own food
system. In casting stones, we’ve
forgotten that our own house has more
than its share of exposed glass.
To be sure, in China some food
manufacturers deliberately added
melamine to products to increase
profits. Makers of baby formula, for
example, watered down their product,
lowering the amount of protein and
nutrients, then added melamine, which is
cheap and fools tests measuring protein
levels.
But melamine is also integral to the
material life of any industrialized
society. It’s a common ingredient in
cleaning products, waterproof plywood,
plastic compounds, cement, ink and
fire-retardant paint. Chemical plants
throughout the United States produce
millions of pounds of melamine a year.
Given the pervasiveness of melamine,
it’s always possible that trace elements
will end up in food. The F.D.A. thus
sets the legal limit for melamine in
food at 2.5 parts per million. This
amount is indeed minuscule, a couple of
sand grains in an expanse of desert that
pose no real threat to public health.
Moreover, the 2.5 p.p.m. figure is
calculated for a person weighing 132
pounds — a cautious benchmark given that
the average adult weighs 150 to 180
pounds.
But these figures obscure more than they
reveal. First, while adults eat about
one-fortieth of their weight every day,
toddlers consume closer to one-tenth.
Although scientists haven’t measured the
differential impact of melamine on
infants versus adults, it’s likely that
this intensified ratio would at least
double (if not quadruple) the impact of
legal levels of melamine on toddlers.
This doubled exposure might not land a
child in the hospital, but it could
certainly contribute to the long-term
kidney and liver problems that we know
are caused by chronic exposure to
melamine.
On a more concrete note, melamine not
only has widespread industrial
applications, but is also used to
buttress the foundation of American
agriculture.
Fertilizer companies commonly add
melamine to their products because it
helps control the rate at which nitrogen
seeps into soil, thereby allowing the
farmer to get more nutrient bang for the
fertilizer buck. But the government
doesn’t regulate how much melamine is
applied to the soil. This melamine
accumulates as salt crystals in the
ground, tainting the soil through which
American food sucks up American
nutrients.
A related area of agricultural concern
is animal feed. Chinese eggs seized last
month in Hong Kong, for instance,
contained elevated levels of melamine
because of the melamine-laden wheat
gluten used in the feed for the chickens
that produced the eggs.
To think American consumers are immune
to this unscrupulous behavior is to
ignore the Byzantine reality of the
global gluten trade. Tracking the flow
of wheat gluten around the world, much
less evaluating its quality, is like
trying to contain a drop of dye in a
churning whirlpool.
More ominous, the United States imports
most of its wheat gluten. Last year, for
instance, the F.D.A. reported that
millions of Americans had eaten chicken
fattened on feed with melamine-tainted
gluten imported from China. Around the
same time, Tyson Foods slaughtered and
processed hogs that had eaten
melamine-contaminated feed. The
government decided not to recall the
meat.
Only a week earlier, however, the F.D.A.
had announced that thousands of cats and
dogs had died from melamine-laden pet
food. This high-profile pet scandal did
not prove to be a spur to reform so much
as a red herring. Our attention was
diverted to Fido and away from the
animals we happen to kill and eat rather
than spoil.
Frightening as this all sounds, the
concerned consumer is not completely
helpless. We can seek out organic foods,
which are grown with fertilizer without
melamine — unless that fertilizer was
composted with manure from animals fed
melamine-laden feed (always possible, as
the Tyson example suggests).
We could further protect ourselves by
choosing meat from grass-fed or truly
free-range animals, assuming the grass
was not fertilized with a conventional
product (something that’s also very hard
to know).
But as all the caveats above indicate,
these precautions will only go so far.
Melamine, after all, points to the much
larger relationship between industrial
waste and American food production.
Regulations might be lax when it comes
to animal feed and fertilizer in China,
but take a closer look at similar
regulations in the United States and it
becomes clear that they’re vague enough
to allow industries to “recycle” much of
their waste into fertilizer and other
products that form the basis of our
domestic food supply.
As a result, toxic chemicals routinely
enter our agricultural system through
the back channels of this under-explored
but insidious relationship.
So, sure, let’s keep the heat on China.
And, yes, let’s take with a big dose of
skepticism the Chinese government’s
assurances that they’re improving the
food supply.
At the same time, though, instead of
delivering righteous condemnation, the
United States should seize upon the
melamine scandal as an opportunity to
pass federal fertilizer standards backed
by consistent testing for this compound,
which could very well be hidden in plain
sight.
James E. McWilliams, a history professor
at Texas State University at San Marcos,
is the author of “American Pests: The
Losing War on Insects From Colonial
Times to DDT.” |
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