Old habits are hard to break if they continue to boost profit?

Anyone have links to urea testing limits?

The article seems to ignore that formaldehyde is relatively cheap and that in the media interviews in China they've already alluded to using it to make melamine liquid so that they can add it to liquid milk. With Urea being really expensive in China and lessening production that way for melamine, they used cow/animal/human urine in the process.

The article seemed to imply that melamine was a "fluke" from processing. I don't agree. There's been way too much scrap melamine in animal feeds preceeding this MelaMilk scandal (re: The early 2007 reports from Thailand baby pigs and astronomical amounts of melamine/cyanuric acid in feed "mostly" from China. Which by the way, implies another country may be doing it also.)

I don't care if I'm right or wrong, and can't look much more foolish than the FDA  , but Bernard seems to have been right. High levels of Uric acid in the animals system from metabolizing high levels of nitrogen compounds (melamine, ammelide, ammeline) can replace the cyanuric acid part of the equation...

All the things in gout are most likely going to be the long term consequences and a clue to caring for damaged animals.. but gout is human, is this what it looks like in animals dining on high levels of MARC?? pretty darn close is my bet.  

Scrap melamine being used adds more toxic components to the whole picture.  None of these observers seem to acknowledge the whole picture, or they don't want to scare people.  Pet owners have already been scared for a very, very long time.

A look back:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/business/worldbusiness/05fakes.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print&adxnnlx=1223060580-q3tezx1+d+iBIOoQq7vNuw

When Fakery Turns Fatal

New York Times June 5, 2007

"Chinese authorities said that Binzhou Futian and a company in bordering Jiangsu province had intentionally doctored feed ingredients to generate bigger profits. Regulators in China called it an isolated incident.

"But agricultural workers and experts in this region tell a different story. They say the practice of doctoring animal and fish feed with melamine and other ingredients is widespread in China. And Wudi, they say, has long been known as a center for such activity.

“"Wudi became famous for fake fish powder almost 10 years ago,” said Chen Baojiang, a professor of animal nutrition at the Agricultural University of Hebei. (Fish powder is used as a protein additive to animal feed, including fish feed.)

“All kinds of fillers have been used. At the beginning it was vegetable protein, then urea. Now it’s feather powder.”

"In small village workshops on the outskirts of Wudi, residents say hundreds of workers make animal feed doctored with fish scraps and cheap ingredients that are then packaged for sale to unsuspecting farmers and fish farms.

Much of the fish scrap comes from the nearby Bohai Bay area or imported from Peru and then blended with cheap fillers to bolster profits.

“"About 90 percent of the fish powder on the market is fake,” said Xue Min, who works at the Feed Research Institute, a division of the China Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Beijing. “When it reaches the customer, he doesn’t know how many kinds of filler have been added.”

"But recently, residents say more buyers have turned skeptical of Wudi’s fish powder. And that has forced some local manufacturers to switch to vegetable protein and search for new buyers.

“"Customers are now suspicious about fish powder,” says Sun Hong Qiang, who operates a fish scrap supplier in Wudi. “Everyone knows there’s some fake fish powder out there.”

"To reach bigger customers, feed producers from Wudi recently began calling themselves “technology” companies that sell protein powder. And they are using online trading Web sites like Alibaba.com to sell their goods.

"But few companies here were as successful as Binzhou Futian, which in 2006 won contracts to ship pet food ingredients to major suppliers in the United States and South Africa.

"The American and South African middlemen say that they found Binzhou Futian through online advertisements and commodity-trading Web sites. The companies did not bother to visit Binzhou’s factories or to investigate its background or its export record.

“"I’m not sure of the introduction, but I think it was through Google search,” said Leon Ekermans, a marketing director at Bester Feed and Grain, a South African grain trader. “We were told by an intermediary that they were once a government company and made good feed.”

"Asked whether Bester had researched the supplier’s record or visited China, Mr. Ekermans acknowledged that the answer was no. “We tested samples,” he said, “but it was very difficult to test for melamine.”"

For the record, the US company who dealt with Binzhou Futian was Wilbur-Ellis, who imported "rice protein concentrate" which FDA testing proved to be wheat flour. Wilbur-Ellis then sold some of the "rice protein concentrate to other middlemen, such as Cereal byproducts and Lortscher Agri.

http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/wilburellis04_07.html

Wilbur-ellis recall-April 18, 2007

http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/cerealbyproducts05_07.html

May 4, 2007--Cereal byproducts' recall

http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/enforce/2007/ENF01027.html

FDA Enforcement Report October 24, 2007-Lortscher Agri recall info

Bester Feed and Grain in South Africa dealt with Binzhou Futian for corn gluten--one of the buyers was Royal Canin, SA.

This may be what prompted the Bester spokesperson to say that melamine testing was difficult:

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=125&art_id=vn20081002112915108C791681

IOL News (South Africa) October 2, 2008

SABS can't test for toxic melamine

"Two of South Africa's leading scientific and testing institutions are not able to test if melamine is contained in food imported from China.

"The South African Bureau of Standards (SABS) and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) have announced that they are unable to test for the ingredient, which is used to falsely boost protein readings."

 

several pages back (around 20?!) I mention some things about uric acid as Dalmatians have this problem. Owners avoid many of the same foods someone with gout would avoid. Purines and acidic levels are important when feeding a Dalmatian or someone with gout. Dalmatians are born this way to different degrees. Some never pass the crystal forming others become stone formers. Some become hard to control stone formers, others easier to control. Big problem with males (blockage, not pleasant), with both genders though, even if stone forming isn't a problem, you still have the crystal production which could cause issues with the bladder, liver, kidneys later in their life. So even though I have a female and blockage isn't so much an issue, I feed as if I could have a stone forming male. Also, frequent potty breaks to keep her "flushed".

Catbird, what you saw may have also been signs of pain from kidney issues.  When my senior kitties (RIP) had ARF (bladder infections, etc) they also became cautious walkers and suddenly looked very old. Also weakened back-ends. But, I wouldn't rule out the arthritic possibility either. Lord only knows what toxic side effects are possible, especially since we don't know exactly what all the toxins are.

I don't understand why either, but remembered that at the time of the South African pet food crisis, the food samples had to be sent overseas where it was finally confirmed that the toxin was melamine.

http://www.eurofins.fr/media/2099798/lipinski.pdf

Page 3--here you see a French Pet Food Company (Royal Canin), contact Eurofins on 12 April 2007, asking about ethylene glycol testing, and continue on to page 4, where they ask for a total tox screen, which includes screening for melamine.

Now we have the current FDA standards as of Oct. 3, 2008:
Cross-posted from SandiK:
http://itchmoforums.com/law-and-politics-about-pets/fda-issues-interim-safety-and-risk-assessment-of-melamine-and-melaminerelat-t6462.0.html;msg90412;topicseen#msg90412

Infant Formula
FDA is currently unable to establish any level of melamine and melamine-related compounds in infant formula that does not raise public health concerns.  In large part, this is because of gaps in our scientific knowledge about the toxicity of melamine and its analogues in infants, including:

the consequences of the continuous use of infant formulas as the sole source of nutrition;
the uncertainties associated with the possible presence and co-ingestion of more than one melamine analogue; and
for premature infants with immature kidney function, the possibility that they may be  fed these formulas as the sole source of nutrition and thus on  a body weight basis experience greater levels of intake for a longer time than is experienced by term infants.
There is too much uncertainty to set a level in infant formula and rule out any public health concern.  However, it is important to understand that this does not mean that any exposure to any detectable level of melamine and melamine–related compounds in formula will result in harm to infants

Other Food Products
In food products other than infant formula, the FDA concludes that levels of melamine and melamine-related compounds below 2.5 parts per million (ppm) do not raise concerns. This conclusion assumes a worst case exposure scenario in which 50% of the diet is contaminated at this level, and applies a 10-fold safety factor to the Tolerable Daily Intake (TDI) to account for any uncertainties. The TDI is an estimate of the maximum amount of an agent to which an individual could be exposed on a daily basis over the course of a lifetime without an appreciable health risk.

Thank you, FDA, for re-examining risk assessment models from the 2007 pet food recalls. HOPE THE CVM READS THIS.
.

Phantom spontaneously got better within about 3 days.  I had an already-scheduled routine vet appointment for about 7-10 days after this was first observed, and decided that I would ask about the stiffness (which I thought was arthritis, since I had had an elderly cat with that) at the appointment.  She got better before the appointment happened, and has never had anything similar in the approximately 2 years since.  Nothing abnormal was found at the vet appointment, other than somewhat concentrated urine (not unusual for a cat who refuses to eat much wet food.)  She remains in good health to this day, thankfully.

My guess is that she "flushed" it, whatever it was, during those few days.