http://www.etaiwannews.com/etn/news_content.php?id=754031

eTaiwan News October 2, 2008

DOH bans six Nestle products in Taiwan

"The Department of Health banned six Nestle milk powders yesterday after tests found traces of the toxic chemical melamine.
The four powders sold under the Klim brand and two from Nestle itself were made in the Chinese province of Heilongjiang by Shuangcheng Nestle.

"Tests showed small amounts of melamine, ranging from 0.06 to 0.854 parts per million, the health department said.

"Later, the company held a news conference protesting the government's changing standards. The amounts of the chemical found were far lower than the level the European Union considered dangerous to health, said Nestle Taiwan spokesman Liang Chia-juei.

"Speaking in front of a banner reading "Klim is 100 percent safe," Liang said the company would lose an estimated NT$1 billion worldwide since the beginning of the scare until the year-end."

Melamine found in Russia:

"MOSCOW — Russian news agencies say food inspectors have found nearly two tons of Chinese dry milk believed to be contaminated with melamine.

Interfax reports that inspectors have found more than 1,000 items containing Chinese-dairy products around the country."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-10-03-china-contaminatedmilk_N.htm?csp=34

5CatMom
₌^..^₌

Somebody needs to jerk a knot in Peter Ben Embarek and ask about melamine cyanurate, the MelaChicken, MelaPork, MelaFish. Or show him the door. I just lost respect for WHO cuz of this painful to read article:

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gYWTr1uigoGZVg0OL7SMP494ukdQ

Limits for melamine in food fixed only recently: WHO1 hour ago

GENEVA (AFP) — Many countries have only recently fixed limits for industrial chemical melamine in food products, a World Health Organisation expert said.

This is because the chemical was not considered a substance found in food before a scandal broke out in China where milk products were tainted with the substance, Peter Ben Embarek, WHO food safety expert told AFP late Thursday.

"To my knowledge, the EU, Hong Kong and New Zealand have only in recent weeks fixed a transitory limit of 2.5 milligrams per kilogramme for food products, with the limit lowered to 1 milligram per kg for food consumed by children," Embarek said.

He added that "melamine has nothing to do with the food chain and therefore no standard had been fixed on a global level.

"There are billions of chemical products that normally should not be found in food -- it is therefore impossible to fix a limit for all the chemicals. That's the case of melamine," he said.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24442887-12377,00.html

The Australian October 3, 2008

Another China milk product withdrawn

"A FOURTH product containing traces of melamine has been recalled in Australia, as the fallout from the Chinese poisoned milk scandal continues to reverberate around the globe.

"Kirin milk tea made in China has been withdrawn from sale after Australian tests revealed levels of melamine in products sold domestically.

""Consumers are advised not to consume Kirin milk tea made in China,'' Food Standards Australia New Zealand said today.

""Consumers should dispose of the product safely out of the reach of children.''

"The recall of the blended drink follows the withdrawal from sale of the milk-based sweet White Rabbit, Cadbury chocolate eclairs made in China and Lotte Koala Biscuits. "

On the noon news, they had a brief piece on this and how it wasn't harmful in the 'approved'. levels. I need to see if they story is up on the website because I wasn't totally tuned in when they started talking about it. Something tells me if the new talking point on the news is approved "harmless" levels, we won't be seeing much in the way of recalls or even which products contain melamine here.

http://theresma.spaces.live.com:80/blog/cns!80EE15D075B65A13!571.entry

3cat--

Here's the working link for that.

http://www.economist.com:80/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12343910

Land of milk and money
Oct 3rd 2008
From Economist.com

... But something fishy seems to be going on here. For one thing, melamine is not all that easy to dissolve into milk. For another, there’s been a worldwide shortage of melamine for some time now. Its price has shot up to more than $1,750 per tonne from $1,100 a few years ago.

So why use an expensive industrial chemical that’s in short supply to dilute a dirt cheap product like milk? The answer can only be that either some flaw rendered the melamine industrially worthless, or it wasn’t melamine at all. The first suggestion is scary enough; the second is even more ominous.

The only thing your correspondent can imagine that would render melamine industrially worthless is if it were reclaimed waste from the production process.

Industrially, melamine is usually made by heating urea in the presence of a catalyst. Because large amounts of ammonia and carbon dioxide are given off in the process, most modern plants now combine melamine production with urea production, which uses ammonia and carbon dioxide as feedstocks. As the two processes feed off one another, a combined plant is considerably more efficient than two separate ones.

But the final stage—washing the melamine and turning it into crystal form—produces lots of effluent that needs treating before releasing into the environment. The usual way to do that is to filter the waste water and pipe that away, and then dispose of the concentrated solids separately.

Those accumulated solids are around 70% melamine, with the rest being made up of various by-products, including our old friend cyanuric acid. As mentioned before, a mixture of melamine and cyanuric acid can be a nasty witches’ brew, especially when ingested by infants.

But what if it’s not melamine that’s being used to spike China’s diluted milk? Urea may be not as rich in nitrogen, but it’s certainly a whole lot cheaper (around $650 per tonne). Sprayed into the milk at the temperature used to create a powdered product for baby food and confectionery, enough of the urea would be converted into melamine to show up in tests.

If that’s the case, where does the urea come from? Is it really fertiliser—or something else cattle produce in prodigious quantities? Perhaps that’s why the Chinese authorities are suddenly so keen to blame more hygienic melamine for all their woes.

I'm no scientist and not a very bright bulb. Is this saying two separate contaminations,
melamine residue waste and cow pee?