<p>[new</a> s or speculation?](<a href=“http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003673979_petfood20.html]new”>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003673979_petfood20.html)</p>
<p>What are we doing to insure this doesn’t get any worse than it already has?</p>
<p>Its almost likely finding poisons ahve been added large scale to baby food.</p>
<p>What would make the Chinese think that adding melamine would increase the protein content of their product? That makes NO sense. </p>
<p>I have a hard time believing that the Chinese would add something that would poison Americans/American pets just because they wanted to poison US pets/residents. It would be the kiss of death to their business–what will happen is that no one will use Chinese wheat gluten/rice products for anything for a long time. Maybe it would start to filter out into other Chinese food products.</p>
<p>It is plausible on one level, if the melamine does make the rice appear to have higher protein content- but surely they must have known about the consequences.</p>
<p>Melamine has been found in three ingredients from China, wheat, corn and rice gluten, which seems much more unlikely than it getting accidentally into one ingredient.</p>
<p>FDA inspectors are apparently still awaiting clearance to go to China and visit the plants
<a href=“http://www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/hottopics/petfood.html[/url]”>http://www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/hottopics/petfood.html</a></p>
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<p>Not a chemist here: melamine makes the rice “appear” to have a higher protein content, but doesn’t actually increase the protein content?</p>
<p>does it matter if it actually works to increase protien?</p>
<p>this is what can happen when we outsource so much, we have little safeguards or recourse</p>
<p>we have outsourced our inspections of airplanes to other countries</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.passnational.org/Public/issues.shtml[/url]”>http://www.passnational.org/Public/issues.shtml</a></p>
<p>this is scary stuff</p>
<p>I know that depending on how sophisticated the tests are, results can be skewed.
For example, although I do not have Hepatitis, the tests the blood bank uses indicate that I do, and so I cannot give blood.</p>
<p>“Not a chemist here: melamine makes the rice “appear” to have a higher protein content, but doesn’t actually increase the protein content?”</p>
<p>If the Chinese make drugs that enhance atheletes preformance but NOT be detected, it shouldn’t be hard to make a drug that appears to improve the quality of a product.</p>
<p>Who says the Chinese aren’t Capitalists? They’ve figured it out.</p>
<p>H said that melamine is full of nitrogen (like your fertilizer is full of nitrogen), but is not a protein. The tests done for “protein content” really measure “nitrogen content.” So melamine would make the product look like it had more protein than it really does.</p>
<p>Basically they are cheating their customers…probably never suspecting that it could cause problems.</p>
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<p>According to same H (not a different H), even the US scientists don’t understand how melamine could cause the kidney damage pets are experiencing. It should not do so from what they know of melamine.</p>