This is interesting.  Not sure if it has been posted already.  But once probably isn't enough, anyway. It appears the government did recognize the risk to dairy products:

http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/agroter8.html

June 2008
Protein Surveillance Assignment (PSA) Summary Report



The Protein Surveillance Assignment (PSA) is the latest food defense related FDA field activity. The PSA was designed as a proactive effort to review protein sources being imported and in response to the investigations of the pet deaths in the United States (U.S.) that were associated with the consumption of pet food contaminated with melamine, cyanuric acid, ammelide, and ammeline. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) noted that the same protein sources being used for pet foods could also be used as protein sources for human food. Thus, the FDA took this proactive measure to help ensure the safety of the U.S. food and feed supply. This was the first food defense related FDA field act ivity that concurrently looked at both the food and feed supply. It was planned and conducted jointly with several FDA operational divisions (Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN), Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM), Office of Regulatory Affairs (ORA)), as well as the Food Emergency Response Network (FERN) Laboratories. PSA activities began on May 1, 2007 and continued until June 30, 2007. The assignment focused on imported vegetable protein extracts and finished food and feed products in domestic status. PSA activities ran concurrently with the pet food field investigations and ORA's Prior Notice Center (PNC) issuing additional directed assignments for both ingredients/pr oducts of interest in import status based on Import Alert #99-29 as well as incoming imports of those products identified in this assignment.

The over-arching goals of this assignment were to:

Examine, through inspection and sample analysis, ingredients and finished products imported from China (or transshipped from China) for the presence of melamine, cyanuric acid, ammelide, and ammeline ;
Launch an educational campaign to make the food and feed industry more aware of the issues in light of the recent pet food recalls involving wheat gluten, rice protein concentrate and corn gluten;
Deter intentional contamination of food and feed through heightened and targeted preventive activities at various points in the chain of supply;
The PSA was originally scheduled to run for thirty days but activities were continued for another thirty days in order to gain additional confidence in the safety of the human food supply. During the PSA, FDA's field personnel were tasked with conducting records examinations and inspections as well as collecting and analyzing domestic and import samples for the presence of melamine, cyanuric acid, ammelide, and ammeline. Throughout the duration of the assignment, over 200 inspections were made throughout the country and over 220 samples were analyzed....
However, FDA believed t hat in the interest of being proactive and raising awareness it was important for the FDA to conduct an assignment looking at a wider scope of domestic and imported products and to complement other actions being undertaken through the pet food field investigations and the Import Alert put in place by ORA's Division of Import Operations.

SCOPE
The PSA provided an opportunity for multiple components of the FDA and the Food Emergency Response Network (FERN) laboratories to work together in a proactive approach to ensure the safety of the U.S. food and feed supply. The planning group (CFSAN, CVM, ORA, and FERN laboratories) worked together to make decisions and develop a strategy for the assignment. The assignment focused on tiering imported food and feed commodities to determine where the greatest risk for adulteration might lie and then effectively implementing a plan to investigate and sample those commodities. The criteria for tiering included: country of origin, protein content and intended populations.  The planning group de veloped an eight week schedule to examine products of interest which included both imported ingredients as well as food and feed products already in the U.S. Additionally, representatives from CFSAN, CVM and ORA modified the targeting rules employed by PNC to identify suspect products of interest. For example, the product codes targeted in the PSA were included in the targeting rules, as well as products that may have been transshipped from China.

The PSA included information on specific firms that received or produced the products of interest. FDA inspectors were asked to visit these firms and complete the following tasks:

Conduct food safety inspections
Disseminate and discuss ALERT food defense awareness information
Collect and submit trace back/trace forward information for the products of interest
Collect a sample of the products of interest and send to a participating FERN lab for analysis
A critical component of the PSA was the ability of the FERN Laboratories to:

Identify and/or validate methods and ensure matrix compatibility for analysis of melamine, cyanuric acid, ammelide, and ammeline
Conduct physical sample analysis and screen for other contaminants
Complete analysis and report results within two working days
Products of Interest Product Codes Examples of products that were identified as products of interest for the Protein Surveillance Assignment
Whole Grain/ Milled Grain Products/ Starch- 02 Soybeans, whole grain, wheat flour, rice flour, soybean flour, soybean meal, soybean powder, rice, corn (whole or grain), wheat germ, wheat gluten, wheat meal,
 
Milk/ Butter/ Dried Milk Products- 09 Acid (lactic) casein

Vegetable Protein Products- 18 Soybean protein powder, soy fiber, wheat protein, cereal base meat extenders

Gelatin/ Rennet/ Pudding Mix/ Pie Filling- 35 Agar (Gelatin Product), Pudding (Pie Filling) Mix, Gelatin, Plain
 
Baby Food Products- 40 Milk Base Formula Product, Infant formula pre-mix bulk product

Dietary Conventional Food/ Meal Replacements- 41 Foods with Supplemental Nutrients Added, with or without artificial sweeteners, Dietary Conventional Foods, Foods (including Water) with Excessive Nutritional Claims, Nutritionally Complete Formulations, Meal Replacements (Not labeled for treatment of disease), Medical foods
Vitamin/ Mineral/ Protein/ Unconventional Diet (Human/Animal)-54 Vitamin, Mineral, Proteins and Unconventional Dietary Specialties For Humans and Animals, protein

Animal Feed (Non-Medicated)- 70 Soybeans, Soybean Meal Whole/Ground Grains Animal, Animal feeds, Wheat Whole/Ground Grains Animal, Mixed Feed Ration For Animals, Domestic Aquaculture

Byproducts for Animal Foods- 71 Rice Mill byproduct, Oilseed byproduct, poultry byproduct, marine byproduct, dairy byproduct

The PSA utilized a proactive approach for FDA to examine ingredients and finished products imported from China (or transshipped from China) for the presence of melamine, cyanuric acid, ammelide, and ammeline. FDA investigators were able to visit over 200 different firms throughout the United States within the time period of this specialized assignment and make members of the food and feed industry more aware of adulteration issues through the dissemination of the ALERT messages. Inspections were performed at various points in the supply chain including, importers, warehouses, and manufacturers. Samples were collected primarily during visits to domestic food manu facturers or in the case of imports, at the point of entry.

Eight nationwide FERN Laboratories were able to analyze over 220 samples of different products of which four were found to be positive. The four positive samples were found to be below the level of concern and unlikely to pose a human health risk based on the Interim Melamine and Analogues Safety/Risk Assessment. All of the laboratory results were analyzed and reported with the established timeframes.

CONCLUSION


Overall, the PSA demonstrated the collaborative ability and willingness of all participants to respond to an identified food safety concern.

I remember this {picture me running around the kitchen, reading labels and tossing food}. This is why the current situation makes no sense on the waiting to detain directive, lack of recalls etc. How could they be dumping that much poo poo into so many products and we (major importers) have so few recalls? If it's because the companies are testing, why haven't they been more transparent about it? And then there is the Kraft issue. They are getting ingredients from a supplier that had contaminated ingredients, right? Some things just don't add up, and that's based on experience, not assumption . . . . Does they FDA have to be transparent with their testing that they did that caused the most recent detention alert?

Do they even cae about their own babies?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081115/ap_on_re_as/as_china_tainted_milk_toll;_ylt=AijZFiSBnK.HctDY7SjHuQ39xg8F

Deaths uncounted in China's tainted milk scandal
    Sat Nov 15, 1:49 pm ET AP – Li Xiaoyan sits on the lap of her mother Li Aiqing at their home in Liti village, near Runan, in China's … LITI VILLAGE, China – Li Xiaokai died of kidney failure on the old wooden bed in the family farmhouse, just before dawn on a drizzly Sept. 10.

Her grandmother wrapped the 9-month-old in a wool blanket. Her father handed the body to village men for burial by a muddy creek. The doctors and family never knew why she got sick. A day later, state media reported that the type of infant formula she drank had been adulterated with an industrial chemical.

Yet the deaths of Xiaokai and at least four other babies are not included in China's official death toll from its worst food safety scare in years. The Health Ministry's count stands at only three deaths.

The stories of these uncounted babies suggest that China's tainted milk scandal has exacted a higher human toll than the government has so far acknowledged. Without an official verdict on the deaths, families worry they will be unable to bring lawsuits and refused compensation.

What the European Union has known for years:

http://firedoglake.com:80/2008/11/15/after-the-melamine-cows-slip-past-has-the-bushie-fda-really-closed-the-barn-door-on-chinas-toxic-food-exports/
After The Melamine Cows Slip Past, Has The B shie FDA Really Closed The Barn Door On China’s Toxic Food Exports?
By: Kirk James Murphy, M.D. Saturday November 15, 2008 7:23 pm  17

This week the B shie FDA announced they'll finally begin screening food imports from China for the toxic chemical melamine.

Last year's news? Nope: last year our pets were dying from imported wheat gluten Chinese producers had deliberately adulterated with melamine. This year there's an epidemic of kidney failure among Chinese babies and children from dairy products with deliberate melamine contamination.

Of course, melamine-induced death and illness is a tragedy wherever it strikes. For the US, the tragedy may have a silver lining: the B shie FDA has belatedly been forced into massive inspections of Chinese food imports. Yep: mass food inspections before the imported ingredients may enter US commerce. In other words, this week the B shie FDA implemented the precautionary principle on a massive scale. Of course, being Bshies, they're still screwing it up. The mass inspections won't test for melamine in all food imports from China: the B shies will only screen for dairy products. Wheat gluten is so 2007.

Testing imported foodstuffs before allowing them into America's food supply is just business as usual, right? Nope: in the bizzaro deregulation world, the FDA inspects less than 1% of all the imports that end up in our food. The Bshie FDA is so anti-inspection that last year they even tried to shut down nearly half of our remaining inspection capacity. After all, by last summer we all knew how well deregulation worked for finance, right?

Besides, the Bshie FDA -- acting as a wholly-owned industrial servant -- has fought off "prospective" testing. On behalf of industry, the Bshies, the Rethugs, and the DLC have all fought hard against testing for toxins before they make us ill...or even dead. Instead, B shco maintained the "body count" chaos that only sets out to find dangerous chemicals after we start getting sick and dying. That's why even the flawed inspection system the FDA announced this week is so important. Finally, the FDA is implementing the precautionary principle for food safety: testing products before they make us sick.

What's the precautionary principle? Over the long term, the principle is our refuge from toxic food, water, and air. The principle demands that all new technologies and chemicals be assessed for harm before they hurt us -- not after we're already suffering.

When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically. In this context the proponent of an activity, rather than the public, should bear the burden of proof.

We're not free yet: the toxins already running around our planet will be here for decades. Yet the power of the precautionary principle is that it will slow and ultimately stop industries from using us, our families, and our biosphere as a vast colony of lab test dummies.

That's why the fact of the B shie EPA adopting the precutionary principle is a de facto revolution in Federal safeguards protecting us from toxic substances.

What's not to like about the EPA plan? Well, like all B shie plans, it leaves out so much it looks brain dead. We find melamine in the imported wheat gluten and milk products we buy from China because the industrial chemical melamine "fools" protein tests into falsely measuring more protein than a food actually contains. Who cares? Well, all protein-rich foods will give false readings with melamine contamination: the FDA's testing program only looks at milk/dairy products. The only effective way to keep China's melamine-contaminated food exports out of our bodies is to test all protein-rich foodstuffs imported from China.

Despite this glaring flaw, this week's FDA announcement is still good news. Now that even the B shies incorporate the precautionary principle into Federal food safety, how could Team O bama possibly do less?

Bon appetit.

And stop sending US food products to China for processing and eventual return here after being exposed to possible contamination or adulteration!  I'm so weary from checking labels, calling companies, writing emails, worrying about what Jake and his people might consume that would be harmful.

Ran into a friend at the local farmers market. She's forwarding a disturbing email to me tomorrow re: labeling. Apparently companies are now REMOVING the "Made in China" label from their products because consumers are starting to catch on. They have some type of barcode system set up instead. The email she's sending me is supposed to show the barcodes and what they mean. Will post as soon as I get it.
This sounds REALLY scary. I live in Hawaii with quite a bit of food here coming from the Asian countries, esp. China. Just got LOTS of people to start checking labels. (I work at the local newspaper, so I talk to quite a few people every day). Now this!! WTF is wrong with these companies???

Welcome Mary and thanks for info on the bar codes. Will look forward to your post back as to what they mean.

"The barcode is made up of 12 digits, in various groups. The first two show the country that issued the barcode. The next four digits indicate the manufacturer. Some countries have a three digit country code, so they only have three digits for the manufacturer code."

It would be great if we could read the barcode & know which country actually made whatever it is but this is not the case.  "The country issuing the barcode" doesn't tell you a thing about where the product was made or where the ingredients are from.  That's just as murky as "distributed by" as far as I'm concerned.