Melamine Tainted Feed Entered Human Food

Melamine Tainted Feed Entered Human Food



 
May 2007 -   A chemical used to make plastics that 
contaminated pet food, killing at least 1,950 cats and 2,200 dogs across 
the United States has now been detected in the human food chain. Melamine 
has been found in hog feed in six states and in chicken feed consumed by 
at least three million chickens. 
The U.S. Department of Agriculture said Tuesday that the same pet food, 
made with contaminated wheat gluten from China, was mixed into chicken 
feed used on farms in Indiana. 
A rice protein concentrate imported from China contaminated with melamine 
and melamine-related compounds was fed to pigs. Federal investigators are 
looking into how hog feed was contaminated in six states - California, 
Kansas, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Utah. 
To deal with these and other food safety problems, both domestic and 
international, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Tuesday created a new 
position - assistant commissioner for food protection. 
Dr. David Acheson, formerly chief medical officer with the FDA's Center 
for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, was appointed to fill the new role. 
As a first task, the FDA said he will develop "an agency-wide, visionary 
strategy for food safety and defense." 

Dr. David Acheson was the Food and Drug Administration's chief medical 
officer until Tuesday when he became the assistant commissioner for food 
protection. 
On a teleconference news briefing Tuesday, Dr. Acheson attempted to assure 
Americans that there is very little likelihood that they will get sick 
from eating pork or chicken contaminated with melamine. 
"We still have no evidence of harm to humans associated with any of the 
processed products from the swine that were fed the contaminated feed," 
Acheson said. "We believe the likelihood of illness from such exposure is 
extremely low. We also have no evidence of reports of harm to the swine 
themselves." 
"One of the reasons we believe that this effect is very low on humans is 
due to the dilution effect, insomuch that the hog feed is only made up to 
a small degree of the contaminated pet food," he said. 
Hogs excrete the melamine in their urine, Dr. Acheson explained, and it is 
not known to be stored in the animals' tissue. 
"Even if it were in the muscle tissue to some low extent, pork is not 
consumed to a high degree in the human diet." 
"I hope not, but I'm a pragmatist." 
Now Dr. Acheson is in charge of initiating changes that could improve food 
safety in the United States.    

       
      

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