20 million chickens have been barred from sale by the USDA because the food they were eating was contaminated with melamine:
WASHINGTON – Federal officials on Friday placed a hold on 20 million chickens raised for market in several states because their feed was mixed with pet food containing an industrial chemical.
Three government agencies – the Agriculture Department, the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency – are overseeing a risk assessment to determine whether the chickens would pose a threat to human health if eaten, USDA spokesman Keith Williams said. The assessment may be completed as early as Monday.
The 20 million chickens represent a tiny fraction of the 9 billion chickens raised each year in the United States. Meat from the birds can’t go into commercial use without the USDA’s inspection seal, which is being withheld until the risk assessment is completed, Williams said.
Which states have chicken producers affected by the hold will be announced later, Williams said. State agriculture officials as well as chicken manufacturers were being contacted as the agencies determine the extent of the problem, he said, adding that many farms in several states probably were involved.
Although adulteration with melamine and related chemicals was undoubtedly present and contributed to ill health in pets who were eating it, I continue to believe that it’s actually a red herring even with the finding that melamine and cyanuric acid, both detected in the contaminated pet foods, when combined cause the formation of crystals that may block the kidneys. Animals tested in Menu Foods’s labs died after just three days. That seems to me to point either to an incredible level of contamination, that the animals’ health was compromised, presumably by eating contaminated foods, before the tests began, or that something else was involved. We’ve started finding melamine because we were looking for it and it’s been there for some time.
Regarding the degree of contamination, I do recall seeing some article that said they could actually see crystals of melamine. I don’t recall if that was the food, or the raw gluten, though.
Pictures of melamine contaminated wheat gluten can be seen at the Univeristy of Guelph’s Laboratory Services page here:
http://www.labservices.uoguelph.ca/urgent.cfm
Further down the page, the U of Guelph site also provides spectrographs of feline urine samples (Figure 1: from 3 cats suspected to have been affected by the as yet unknown toxin) and subsequently compares one of those samples to the in vitro urine + melamine + cyanuric acid sample (Fig 4).
A collection of university sites that are investigating melamine and who are posting some of their graphics can be found here:
http://www.aavld.org/mc/page.do?sitePageId=35762&orgId=aavld
I agree that the labs are finding melamine now because they are testing for it – a verificationist scientific approach. However, strong hypothesis testing relies on refutation. Are scientists at the FDA or university labs looking to disprove the melamine/cyanuric acid hypothesis?
Note that I don’t for a second deny that the melamine+cyanuric acid reaction takes place nor am I claiming that it’s benign. I just wonder if it’s what killed the pets who have died. It should be recalled that Russian researchers experimented with just this combination of chemicals and didn’t find it as troublesome as it would have to be to have produced the observed results.