Melamine for dinner...
May. 9th, 2007 10:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
astra_nomer...plates is fine. But not so much in the food itself.
"FDA scientists" have decided that chickens fed melamine-tainted feed are fine for human consumption. As as scientist, I want to believe them. If they say that amounts of melamine detected in chickens were well below health safety limits, I'll take their word for it.
But my gut reaction is to be really, really skeptical, and seriously consider buying only organic chicken and other meat. Because really, scientists are only human and are therefore prone to error. For instance, I'm often skeptical of press releases regarding astronomy, because I often know the assumptions they make to justify their claims. Then again, maybe I'm falling for the "can't trust scientists" rhetoric that the Bush administration has been so good at spreading. That's a seriously scary thought.
My brain and my gut are at war with each other. What would you do? Would you eat chicken that had eaten melamine-tainted food (assuming you're not vegetarian, of course)?
"FDA scientists" have decided that chickens fed melamine-tainted feed are fine for human consumption. As as scientist, I want to believe them. If they say that amounts of melamine detected in chickens were well below health safety limits, I'll take their word for it.
But my gut reaction is to be really, really skeptical, and seriously consider buying only organic chicken and other meat. Because really, scientists are only human and are therefore prone to error. For instance, I'm often skeptical of press releases regarding astronomy, because I often know the assumptions they make to justify their claims. Then again, maybe I'm falling for the "can't trust scientists" rhetoric that the Bush administration has been so good at spreading. That's a seriously scary thought.
My brain and my gut are at war with each other. What would you do? Would you eat chicken that had eaten melamine-tainted food (assuming you're not vegetarian, of course)?
no subject
Date: 2007-05-09 02:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-09 03:15 pm (UTC)Melamine is an industrial chemical produced from urea. It is cheap because it can be produced very easily and basically for free by dumping urea into the waste gas stream of a coal gasification plant. It is mostly used in the production of fireproof fake-wood paneling.
Last month's poison-pet-food hubbub was the result of melamine contamination (or, at least as likely, deliberate adulteration) at a major gluten producer in China. This may have been done because melamine fools a common test for the protein content of gluten, which would have allowed a cheaper product to sell for more. Gluten is used as a base for animal feeds -- China produces and uses huge amounts for its fish-farming industry, and re-sells a smaller quantity to (primarily Canadian) feed manufacturers.
Melamine, in substantial quantities, inhibits liver and kidney function; organ failure and death can follow and indeed did in the case of several pets (and, bizarrely, at least one pet owner who ate some of her cat's food to reassure the apparently much smarter cat who was unwilling to eat it).
Melamine in chicken feed is an interesting question. Humans are not particularly sensitive to melamine (LD50 is 3000 mg/kg) and the quantity in the chicken would presumably be low to begin with, so the danger of acute damage is probably very, very low. However I am not aware of any studies of the dangers of chronic low doses, so it's not a totally irrational worry.
On balance, I'd believe the FDA on this one, but keep an eye on the story as we probably haven't seen the last of it -- Gluten is ubiquitous in nutritional chemistry, and is stored for years, so even if the adulteration ended today (and it probably won't...) we may see melamine contamination stories cropping up for quite some time.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-09 03:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-09 05:31 pm (UTC)