3cat what an excellent way to put that - Russian roulette food supply. Now that is exactly what it has become and so true that China is not the only place exporting dangerous food and products. I know we can't put inspectors all over but if we made it a requirement that testing results accompany each shipment from another country that was done just before it was loaded on a ship and attached to every skid/box/crate etc. from a lab that was co set-up in that importing country that may help take the load off of other places too. And we need to quite possibly limit the food imported into this place to a few ports that would be easier to control inspecting more than the 1-2% that is now inspected.

OK got some help from our little birdie on the question of lactofferin, thank you widdle burdie!


It looks like the lactoferrin is there to get rid of bacteria. 
 
http://www.controlled-trials.com/ISRCTN71737811/
 
Interventions--3. Standard preterm formula with addition of dairy lactoferrin (Vivinal Domo, the Netherlands, containing lactoferrin 90%, protein 97%, moisture 1.5%, minerals 1.5%)
 
http://www.nutraingredients.com/Industry/Dutch-group-increases-stake-in-lactoferrin-producer
 
Dutch Group increases stake in lactoferrin producer
 
21 May 2004
 
Netherlands-based Pharming has increased its stake in Australian company ProBio and is now hoping to accelerate the commercialisation of recombinant human lactoferrin in Asia, writes Phil Taylor.
 
Other lactoferrin producers, also from the Netherlands, include DSM and DMV.

http://www.answers.com/topic/the-campina-group

The Campina Group

Type: Cooperative
Address: Hogeweg 9, NL-5301, LB Zaltbommel, Netherlands

Web: http://www.campina.com

The Industrial Products division includes butter and other food ingredients for the industrial food industry, dairy derivatives (notably lactoferrin, protein hydrolysates, and lactose) produced by the company's DMV International operation for the pharmaceutical and health industries.

While Campina gradually became the cooperative's flagship consumer brand, the DMV name became associated with the group's actively developing industrial ingredients operations. These included the production of butter and other dairy products for the professional catering and food processing industries, as well as such products as lactose (milk sugar) and protein hydrolysates, bioactive peptides, and lactoferrin.


Whey-hey! Humble dairy by-product makes good : Food News & Comment 
DMV International (based in Veghel, the Netherlands), one of the largest producers of lactoferrin, has meanwhile formed a joint venture with US Farmland ...

Sorry, don't know the age of this article--you have to be a subscriber to get all of it.

http://food-decision.com/Financial-Industry/DMV-and-Arla-food-ingredients-to-merge

DMV & Arla To Merge 9 December 2004

Among DMV's range, that contributed €500m to Campina's €3.7 billion turnover, is its natural milk protein lactoferrin product, a leading player in the burgeoning value-added whey fractions market currently enjoying strong growth, in some parts of the world hitting 20 per cent per year.

http://members.ift.org/IFT/Pubs/Newsletters/weekly/nl091703.htm

Beef company to use lactoferrin treatment
Farmland National Beef Packing Co., the U.S.'s fourth-largest beef packer, announced that starting next month they will spray all of their products with activated lactoferrin. Lactoferrin received government approval last month for use as a wash that detaches harmful bacteria from cattle carcasses. aLF Ventures is a joint venture between Farmland National Beef and DMV International, a unit of the Netherlands-based dairy company Campina and is marketing and selling the activated lactoferrin. The company says lactoferrin is a naturally occurring substance that inhibits more than 30 strains of harmful bacteria.

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/fs/food/news/aug2803lactoferrin.html

Aug 29, 2003 (CIDRAP News) – After getting a green light from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), a Salt Lake City company says it will launch the use of lactoferrin, a milk protein, as an antimicrobial treatment for beef carcasses in October.

The FDA announced last week that it sees no safety problems with the use of lactoferrin in antimicrobial sprays to prevent Escherichia coli O157:H7 contamination on beef carcasses. The agency said it has no objection to plans by aLF Ventures, Salt Lake City, to market lactoferrin for that use.

"We'll be launching this process aid beginning October 6," David R. Hall, senior vice president of aLF Ventures, told CIDRAP News. "National Beef in Kansas City [Mo.] will be placing this on 100% of their carcasses." ALF Ventures is a joint venture of Farmland National Beef, based in Kansas City, and DMV International, which is part of the Netherlands-based dairy company Campina Melkunie. Hall said Farmland National Beef accounts for about 10% of the US retail beef market.

Lactoferrin is an iron-binding protein found in milk and many other bodily secretions, according to medical reference books. In neutrophils (a type of white blood cell), it is believed to combat ingested bacteria and fungi by depriving them of iron.

Hall said the company's formulation, called activated lactoferrin (trade name Activin), doesn't kill bacteria but removes them from the surface of meat. He couldn't give a percentage reduction in bacteria effected by the lactoferrin treatment, but he said, "In the testing we did, once you put meat through the current interventions and then added lactoferrin as an incremental step, we couldn’t detect any remaining bacteria on the meat."

He cautioned, "We don't want people to say this is the silver bullet" that makes beef totally safe. "This is another incremental intervention that continues to take the pathogen level as low as it can possibly be."

Craig Hedberg, PhD, a food safety specialist at the University of Minnesota, commented that lactoferrin "serves to inhibit the growth of the organism, but there's not a lot of published literature looking at the efficacy of lactoferrin as a potential treatment. What is out there suggests that it may be in the ballpark of a 1-log [90%] reduction, which isn't a tremendous gain over other existing technologies." Hedberg is an associate professor of environmental and occupational health in the university's School of Public Health.

In a news release, the FDA said, "Although aLF Ventures was not required to seek approval from FDA before it marketed lactoferrin, aLF Ventures provided FDA scientific data supporting the firm's conclusion that lactoferrin is 'generally recognized as safe' (GRAS)." The substance is safe for the general population, including people who are allergic to milk, the statement said. A food ingredient is "GRAS" if generally available scientific data lead experts to conclude that the substance is safe for its intended use, the agency said.

In its notice to the FDA, aLF Ventures said the amount of added lactoferrin that remains on beef carcasses after spraying is comparable to the amount that occurs naturally in beef, the FDA said.

Because the residual amount is very small, the use of lactoferrin as a spray for carcasses does not require labeling of meat products from those carcasses, according to Hall and Andrea McNally, a spokeswoman for the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service. Hall said aLF Ventures earlier received approval from the FDA and USDA to market lactoferrin for other uses that would require labeling of the treated meat. "For carcass application they deem it as a process aid, so there's no labeling requirement for that," he said.

Hall said aLF is studying the use of lactoferrin as an antimicrobial treatment for "subprimal" cuts of meat (large pieces that are cut up further in retail stores), finished cuts, and ready-to-eat meats. Those uses would require labeling of the products, he said.

http://ift.confex.com/ift/2004/techprogram/paper_21004.htm

Technological properties and applications of lactoferrin 
J. M. STEIJNS, II, R&D Center, DMV International, PO Box 16, Wageningen, 6700 AA, Netherlands

Milk, by the virtue of its natural origin and purpose, is a wealthy source of substances known to be beneficial for the health of the neonate. Apart from essential nutrients for growth and maintenance, milk also contains components for defense against potentially harmful environmental invaders like micro-organisms. Lactoferrin, an iron-binding glycoprotein identified in high concentrations in human breast milk more than 40 years ago, plays an important role in this defence system. Lactoferrin has also been identified in the milks of the cow, pig, horse, buffalo, goat and mouse. On a commercial basis lactoferrin is isolated from cow’s milk, in which reported levels range from 20 to 200 mg/ml. The production from cow’s milk , or the whey from cheese factories, is mainly due to the economy of scale in the dairy industry together with industrial developments in chromatographic separation technology . Worldwide production of bovine lactoferrin has increased tremendously the last decade with current estimates ranging from 50 to 100 metric tonnes per year for product purities over 90%. The first major application of bovine lactoferrin was the addition to infant formulas to further humanize breast milk replacers. Many other applications followed in line with new insights from lactoferrin science. Nowadays lactoferrin is applied in a.o. nutritional iron supplements and drinks, fermented milks, chewing gums, immune enhancing nutraceuticals, cosmetic formulas and feed and pet care supplements. Dosage per 100 g product ranges from 10 mg till 100 mg. This broad application range requires knowledge on effective incorporation of this bioactive component based on the prediction of its properties during processing , storage and consumer use. Physical-chemical properties like heat stability, pH sensitivity, iron release and enzyme sensitivity are relevant in this respect. Some selected examples will be presented to illustrate this.
 


Liddle Burdie thinks more than likely the source of the lactoferrin in the oral gel would be DMV, as they seem to be working with a lot of it for a lot of different applications.


 

Purringfur, I noticed that too in the book I read Pet Food Politics.  Right after the recalls, China vowed to make their food safer, what happened to that?  This year we have the same exact problem going on albeit a different product but once again the same vow from China.  If they were at all willing to take suggestions, mine to them would be, keep track of your own house first before pointing fingers at other's houses. 

Now that our hardware hiatus seems to be over, here's a very worrisome post about
birth defects possibly caused by long term consumption of melamine:

Now I am really worried, and so should the US FDA be worried:

http://en.epochtimes.com/n2/china/melamine-birth-defects-6811.html

Melamine Contaminated Food May Cause Birth Defects Epoch Times Staff Nov 6, 2008
The long term impact of such melamine contamination and its effect on future generations remains unknown.

For those that have not seen these...I am going to try to contact him..
just don't know how to yet..  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3dbBQPIFf0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUB79WJ9ktQ

Another suspicious FDA voluntary food recall, strawberry flavored:

http://www.fda.gov:80/oc/po/firmrecalls/nestle11_08.html

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- November 7, 2008, Glendale, CA -- Nestlé USA is voluntarily recalling two (2) production codes of Nestlé Nesquik Strawberry Powder 21.8 ounce that may contain small fragments of aluminum.

The recall only includes two (2) production codes of 21.8-ounce containers of Nestlé Nesquik Strawberry Powder. Printed on the bottom of each plastic container is a production code of "82255880" or "82265880" with a best by date of "August 2010."

Anyone know if there is any requirement by the US FDA that the reason for the voluntary recall be truthful?


If you doubt melamine is still pouring into the United States in our 97 to 99 percent of uninspected food imports, see these Oasis refusals
for October 2008, where there is no doubt about the adulterant [thanks, catbird]:
http://itchmoforums.com/news-recall-related/oasis-refusals-october-2008-t6820.0.html

Hmmmm, 80 percent fall in Hong Kong's egg supply from a month ago:

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?from=rss_World&set_id=1&click_id=3&art_id=nw20081110113206123C615642
Egg-fried rice off Hong Kong menus
Supplies from China are believed to have fallen by 80 percent in recent weeks after the discovery in October of the same chemical in eggs that caused a nationwide milk scare a month earlier.


6.5 percent of China's egg production is exported to the United States.
Has that been tested lately by the US FDA?

Here's someone else's unofficial list of melamine-contaminated foods:

http://creativeherb.com/2008/10/30/unofficial-melamine-contaminated-food-list/

One really does have to wonder about the strawberry mix recall.  There were certainly a number of strawberry-flavored products recalled around the world already: cookies, sour milk, pretzels, ice cream, etc.

Carolo, I also worry about the eggs, powdered eggs in addition to fresh.  Some bakeries & restaurants use the powdered form to save some money.  Yikes!

I think Mike Mozart, who does the melamine/poisonous food videos on youtube, has 3 videos total.  Is that correct?  I hope everyone here has viewed them.  I wonder if Mike can gather a collection to have some of his Chinese-made candy tested for melamine.