Quote from: nightrider on April 30, 2007, 05:10:37 PM
To clarify, melamine itself is not toxic, but it reads as protein when the product is tested. Also very cheap. You or your pet could have eaten melamine with no ill effects other than you were getting less protein than you might have thought. However, it was TAINTED melamine which is the only reason this became an issue.

The short answer is no, it does not "seem" to be toxic.  The long answer is that it accumulates in the kidneys and will eventually cause kidney damage as well as accumulating in the bladder as stones which greatly increase the risk of bladder cancer.  This may or may not be the cause of death.  All the animal studies ever done on melamine:

http://www.inchem.org/documents/sids/sids/108781.pdf

What is important here is not whether it is toxic or not, but whether it should be in the food supply or not.  The FDA has already answered that with a resounding NO!

What I find interesting is that it is considered a common practice in China.  That means that SOMEBODY knew it was getting into the food supply.  I'll tell you one thing, if I was buying thousands of tons of food-grade product from China I would know everything about the supplier, including what he calls his wife when they're in bed.

A thought to ponder:

Melamine is used the world over as an electrical insulator.  It is in trasformers, capacitors, contactors, fuses, etc etc etc.  Several outfits in China have gone to great lengths to get their hands on cheap melamine, this includes grinding up salvaged melamine.  There's a lot of nasty stuff in electrical equipment including, but not limited to:  Mercury, Lead, PCB's, Copper, and Nickel.  I wonder how much of that got mixed in the melamine?

so nasty. ugh.

of course the question people must be asking themselves is how much did the US importers know?

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2007/04/pet_food_recall27.html

If they knew, which IMO they probably did, or at least didn't care to find out, they are nearly as culpable as the people who mixed it in in the first place.

Quote from: yamahonkawazuki on May 01, 2007, 08:46:04 PM

Quote from: nightrider on May 01, 2007, 05:44:05 PM
FDA + pharmaceutical companies + Bush administration/clinton administration/or whoever else is in power = ?

Actually, that was NOT a quote from Nightrider, but doctoring quotes/blaming Clinton -- what's the difference.  It's all the right wing has these days...

I'll certainly give you that Clinton couldn't keep it in his pants, but he appointed competent people to lead government agencies.  He was too much in bed with corporate Amerika, but he didn't let them WRITE the rules and contracts.  And lying about sexual indiscretion is a far cry from lying us into a war that (as we now know) was pre-determined before the puppeteers but W in "power."

I think this is worth another thread. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/world/06poison.html?hp

Yet another reason why self-sufficiency is good...one of the main reasons the US did so well as a developing nation is because of our vast natural resources. There weren't all these chemicals and such back then. We have the resources to make all of that stuff ourselves, but we outsource to save a few $$. 

There's a reason farmers are hurting. It's illegal for dairy farmers to strike and dump their own milk because the government was afraid that the milk supply would diminish and a food staple for growing children would be too expensive....all of this outsourcing of the food industry and importing grains is ridiculous. Farms are slowly disappearing and have been for quite some time. What are we going to do when there's very few left? We will not only be dependent on foreign oil but also foreign food supplies. This is going to be bad...we need to work towards becoming more self sufficient...

Quote from: nightrider on May 05, 2007, 01:44:31 PM
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/world/06poison.html?hp

I just got home and saw this article and was going to post it but Nightrider beat me to it.  Want to get REALLY pissed at the Chinese?  Read the article.  I'm SO glad we gave China most favored nation status.

We should declare economic war on China effective immediately.  A pleasant side effect would be that Wal-Mart would have to find new manufacturers for about 90% of their sh*t.

Quote from: Onlypastrana199 on May 05, 2007, 01:53:21 PM
Yet another reason why self-sufficiency is good...one of the main reasons the US did so well as a developing nation is because of our vast natural resources. There weren't all these chemicals and such back then. We have the resources to make all of that stuff ourselves, but we outsource to save a few $$. 

There's a reason farmers are hurting. It's illegal for dairy farmers to strike and dump their own milk because the government was afraid that the milk supply would diminish and a food staple for growing children would be too expensive....all of this outsourcing of the food industry and importing grains is ridiculous. Farms are slowly disappearing and have been for quite some time. What are we going to do when there's very few left? We will not only be dependent on foreign oil but also foreign food supplies. This is going to be bad...we need to work towards becoming more self sufficient...

Yeap Farms Are Disappearing Here at an Alarming Rate.What arms that aren't being Destroyed by Housing Developments is being Turned into Tree Farms ETC.