Here at the Shandong Mingshui Great Chemical Group factory, huge boiler vats are turning coal into melamine, which is used to create plastics and fertilizer.
But the leftover melamine scrap, small acorn-sized chunks of white rock, is then being sold to local entrepreneurs, who say they secretly mix a powdered form of the scrap into animal feed to artificially enhance the protein level.
“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 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.”
Most local feed companies do not admit that they use melamine. But last Friday here in Zhangqiu, a fast-growing industrial city southeast of Beijing, a pair of animal feed producers explained in great detail how they purchase low-grade wheat, corn, soybean or other proteins and then mix in small portions of nitrogen-rich melamine, whose chemical properties give a bag of animal feed an inflated protein level under standard tests.
“If you add it in small quantities, it won’t hurt the animals,” said one animal feed entrepreneur whose name is being withheld to protect him from prosecution.
The man – who works in a small animal feed operation that consists of a handful of storage and mixing areas – said he has mixed melamine into animal feed for years.
“It won;t hurt the animals” well aside from that…oh, it’s poisonous and isn’t actually nutrition?
The fact that you are defrauding your customers by faking out a test doesn’t seem to bother anyone…
The melamine is used only to fool the protein content tests!
It is a cheat to make the feed appear to be higher grade! This is what passes for good business practice in Asia!
This kind of behaviour takes place all over the world – not simply in Asia.
When there are no or few regulations, or inadequate testing, people will supply the cheapest quality goods, list and sell them as high quality – and pocket the difference. This is the norm in Asia and Africa and L. America etc.
When there are regulations, people will do the same, and attempt to hide the difference. The ratio of these cases is lower – but, it all depends on the extent of the regulations and the financial ability and expertise of the society to police them.
How do you think the bridges collapsed in Quebec, other than that there were ‘corners cut’, and materials of lower quality substituted for higher quality – and the costs pocketed by the builder. Were those bridges supervised by experts during construction? Obviously not. Were they checked by experts when trouble was reported? No, the individuals who checked on them had no competence to realize they were collapsing.
What about Walkerton and its water supply?
I’m sure we’ve all had to deal with various manufacturing situations (house, condo, car, electrical equipment etc etc) over the years, when you find that certain ‘standard requiremets’ were not met, were inadequate, were substituted by a cheaper quality, etc.
Some new research came out late last week about the formation of crystals, which were found in the affected animals, when melamine and cyanuric acid react.
Wikipedia has been updated already with this info.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanuric_acid
On April 19 researchers announced that a “spoke-like crystal” had been found in contaminated rice protein concentrate and the tissues and urine of affected animals. The crystal serves as a biomarker for contamination and is roughly 30% melamine. The remainder has been identified as cyanuric acid, amilorine and amiloride by researchers at the University of Guelph, in Ontario and Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. The three chemicals are metabolites of melamine, which researchers hypothesized were formed as the animals metabolized the melamine. Other researchers at Michigan State University have confirmed amilorine and amiloride but not the cyanuric acid. At least one researcher believes that cyanuric acid, commonly used in pool chlorination, is the most likely chemical in the contaminated products causing renal failure in the affected animals, although tests in dogs and rats have shown that cyanuric acid is safe.[1] Richard Goldstein of the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine hypothesized that the crystallization of melamine and cyanuric acid might cause cyanuric acid to remain in the kidneys for longer periods of time than when cyanuric acid in pool water is accidentally swallowed by people, explaining its apparent increased toxicity in this case. While it remains possible that cyanuric acid was added as a separate contaminant, Goldstein said that it was likely that it was the result of bacterial metabolism of melamine.[2] Cyanuric acid is a known intermediate byproduct of bacterial metabolism of melamine.[3]
It may depend on the animals being fed the melamine. Ruminants, like cattle, sheep and goats, can take carbon based mineral products, convert them to protein to feed their digestive system micro organisms and those bugs digest the feed the animals eat. Monogastrics, like cats, dogs, pigs and humans, cannot digest non protein nitrogen sources like urea. Urea is commonly added to the diets of cattle, beef and dairy, to boost the protein input of the feed. It is quite legal throughout the world.
I hope you weren’t feeding your small animal the contaminated pet food too …
As I have said here before, BOYCOTT EVERYTHING MADE IN CHINA, especially food products, of any kind. With the overall hygiene practiced in China today it makes one sick, never mind the food.
That’s a tall order WC , everything over here has MADE IN CHINA on the bottom.
…two words: Soylent Green.
So if Soy is from human hair, wonder where Chinese Calcium pills come from?
Don’t know what is more sick, China doing this stuff, or us continuing to buy it.
I can never look at another Chinese product with confidence now knowing my local government authority was asleep at the wheel.
Heck went into Moores the other day looking for dress shoes as mine are looking tired. Every shoe was “Made in China”.
Went over to PayLess, same.
Went over to Shoes For Less and believe it or not they had ones made in Portugal, Spain, Hungary, Romania – guess where I dropped $300 in shoes?
…referring to the shoes, not really off topic, but wouldn’t put it past China to do something like what Nazi Germany did with skin covered lampshades and such.
Hint: Falun Gong.
Why are we still importing anything from China?
I realize this is a bit of a rhetorical question, roughly akin to asking why Canadians are not weak from laughter at the demands of any eco-nut who wants us to trash our economy and send the money to China so that they can continue their ‘developing nation’ rape of the environment and any co-incidental business ethics that get in their way, but still! Nothing good has ever come from dealing with totalitarians on their terms.
Melamine poisoning in Chinese sourced wheat gluten? You expected something different from a nation’s who’s industrial and market expansion has no place for consumer/labor/industrial standards or regulatory watchdogs?
Can’t you hardly wait until the Kyoto fraud allocates the bulk of Canada’s seed crops to fuel production and we have to rely on Chinese sources for our food grains?
Another product of the the extremely bad ideas forced on us by our political leaders…hey wait, aren’t we the ones who tell them how we want things to go??
Personally I’m surprised heads have not rolled in the federal regualtory authorities who are overpaid to sit on their ass while Canadians are exposed to toxic imported products that can enter the food chain…first mad cow disease and now this…did any melamine foods get into the food chain through agricultural use of this toxic Chinese gluten?
Or is this a deep dark state secret like all the malfeasance that goes on in Fed food quality/marketing monopolies?
So much for trusting a communist regime with your country’s supplies. Who entrusted them with uncontrolled exports? The bureaucracy in Ottawa/Washington did. It’s just pets that died, there will be no heads rolling, the calls for investigation will be suppressed. I will continue struggling to obtain food with as little gluten as possible, and end up in pain every time I fail. I hate them all, I am in pain because the businesses want to sell more food to us and don’t care of the methods. Every tiny bit of gluten poisons me for months, but they don’t care – they’ve already got my money and don’t give a rat ass about my suffering. There is no God, he would not have allowed them to poison-torture me slowly.
This has far less to do with “China” as it does with companies going with the lowest bidder regardless of quality …
You see this daily in practically every industry. the supplier who produces a high quality product at a reasonable price loses their contracts to a supplier who produces a far inferior product at a slightly better price.
If the dog food is poison , what about the pensioners , what about the old folks?
what about my spam on rye?
“…what about my spam on rye?”
Time for green eggs and ham.
…”with the lowest bidder regardless of quality/
You see this daily in practically every industry”
Not really there are something called standards, which is meant to protect from the lowest bidder being the most dangerous.
…just remember that next time you cross a bridge.
…english is my 3rd language btw…
“there is something”
dang.
Seeing as the Chinese were obviously “coy” about SARS, when they knew darned well they had an epidemic of something virulent and highly contagious on their hands, I stopped eating Chinese food at Chinese restaurants.
My thinking was, I don’t know if they’ve just been visiting their family in China. And not only had China been incredibly lax in their dealing with this deadly disease, so had the Canadians (then under Librano oversight). Why would I trust that the won ton is safe, or the moo goo guy pan, or the rice…?
Buyer beware. We’ve just got to be more vigilant and stop expecting more and more for less and less. Doesn’t this situation fall under the Scriptural statement: “The root of all evil is the LOVE of money.” North Americans are, perhaps, very much complicit in all of this duplicity on the part of the Chinese.
Communism, with no sense that “I am my brother’s/sister’s keeper”–no matter what they pretend–wed to crass North American secular consumerism is a deadly combination.
NoOne: “This has far less to do with “China” as it does with companies going with the lowest bidder regardless of quality …”
I think you have oversimplified the situation. In this particular case, the supplier was using a booster to make an inferior product look better. If given the choice of a couple of different suppliers, with what appears to be similar quality products … most companies start to evaluate on other criteria. Believe it or not, factors like delivery, supply etc factor into most situations with a higher priority than price (in most instances).
As a consumer – when I see a set of 3 funnels at a dollar store vs the same set at Canadian Tire for $4 (and most likely made at the same factory) … I buy for $1. When I see a Made in China tool set at Canadian Tire going for the same price as 2 quality wrenches … I leave it and wait for a sale on the quality stuff … my hands can’t take wrenches breaking. I can’t ever imagine buying anything to do with safety from China.
If it was a NA company, can you imagine them using a “we’ve been doing it for years” defense?
‘we’ve been doing this for years’ defense is exactly what I am not allowing my kids to use. You broke that thing? Yes, but long time ago… Every parent heard that story.
“This has far less to do with “China” as it does with companies going with the lowest bidder regardless of quality …
You see this daily in practically every industry. the supplier who produces a high quality product at a reasonable price loses their contracts to a supplier who produces a far inferior product at a slightly better price.”
Bull SXXT! The conmsumer market is demand driven and many are willing to pay the price for “quality”…the quality business/industrial incentive perculates down from consumer to the supply chain to the raw material supply.
Regardless of the self actuated regulation quality incentive injects into the market, the government has set minimal quality levels to guarantee safety and guard against fraud…it was the government regualtory watchdog that was asleep here.
Sometime the ani-capitalism blinders preculde a realistic vision of the business/marketing cycle.
Its why you never take business/economic advice from the left.
1) Since some of these Chinese companies profess to adding melamine for apx 15 years, why has the pet food issue just surfaced recently?
2) To put things into global perspective, wasn’t it Howard Hughes who applied to the American government for permission to use wood products (in the form of cellulose) to bulk up hamburger meat?
Just another case of “nothing for something”; which certainly isn’t restricted to 3rd world countries now, is it?