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 The Food and Drug Administration issued a conclusion on Nov. 28 concerning the safety and relative toxicity of melamine in baby formula, claiming that 1 part per million can cause no real harm. This study is a response to the September outcry over China's use of the substance in dairy products, which caused thousands of infants to fall sick and at least four to die, in addition to the cats and dogs poisoned in the United States in 2007 by imported food. On Oct. 3, the FDA's risk assessment of melamine and its related compounds concluded that "levels of melamine and its analogues below 2.5 parts per million in foods other than infant formula do not raise public-health concerns." Now, we have a 1 part per million safety cushion for formula, which really isn't a comfort considering that, at any level, melamine still is not food. At all.
Melamine is an organic base that can bond quite easily with similar substances, and it is used in a range of such useful items as concrete, Formica, and flame retardant. When combined with formaldehyde, it produces a strong resin used to make flatware and kitchen utensils. When combined with cyanuric acid, an element in bleaches and herbicides, it becomes melamine cyanurate, and in the athanor of the digestive tract, this substance crystallizes into a particularly nettlesome kind of kidney stone, hard to dissolve, and occasionally toxic and/or fatal. Why does this substance exist at all in some foods? Because it raises the apparent protein content so dairy plants will accept subpar milk.
"Farmers have no idea what melamine is. They only know if they add it, their milk will not be refused," said a Hebei Province feedmill owner. Other than that, it does nothing, except kill people in certain quantities.
(Melamine) does nothing, except kill people in certain quantities.
Elsewhere, the FDA has taken a more sub-radar approach to its regulatory obligations: genetically altered or enhanced foods may soon come under harsher scrutiny, but the final products won't have to be labeled that they have been altered; ditto for cigarettes, leaving the tobacco megaliths free rein to continue using such misleading and meaningless terms as "light" instead of actual percentages of ingredients; alternative medication is couched under separate terms from industry pharmaceuticals and is therefore subject to leaner attentions. (And what business does the FDA have in approving substances that are neither foods nor drugs, simply superfluous, sometimes dangerous compounds found in foods and drugs?).
The angle seems to be fear of information. Perhaps the FDA is spooked that a sirloin marked "Genetically Enhanced with Bovine Growth Hormone" will send people into a panic, and yes, there is the possibility that customers will veer away from that, but it is their right to know as much as possible about the things they choose to put in their bodies and the bodies of their families. And the FDA should be held responsible for upholding that right. Melamine in low quantities is OK? Well, fine, that's great for Formica, but what the hell is it doing in baby formula?
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