GardenBanter.co.uk

notice that this has been in the "meal" of fish food for a while.
Ingrid

http://www.itchmo.com/read/melamine-...years_20070429

No more denials, no more hemming and hawing by the FDA. Time to take
massive cautionary action is now. It's not just animal feed anymore.
It's not just pet food. It's a crisis. It's been going on for years.
It's being done in "wheat, corn, soybean or other proteins".

All ingredients and foods imported from abroad needs to be tested now.
Period. Any food that used suspect ingredients should be recalled.
ASAP.

Highlights below from the IHT article (emphasis ours):

Here at the Shandong Mingshui Great Chemical Group factory, huge
boiler vats are turning coal into melamine, which is used to create
plastics and fertilizer.

But the leftover melamine scrap, small acorn-sized chunks of white
rock, is then being sold to local entrepreneurs, who say they secretly
mix a powdered form of the scrap into animal feed to artificially
enhance the protein level.

"It just saves money," says a manager at an animal feed factory
here. "Melamine scrap is added to animal feed to boost the protein
level."

The practice is widespread in China. For years animal feed sellers
have been able to cheat buyers by blending the powder into feed with
little regulatory supervision, according to interviews with melamine
scrap traders and agricultural workers here.

"Many companies buy melamine scrap to make animal feed, such as fish
feed," says Ji Denghui, general manager of the Fujian Sanming Dinghui
Chemical Company. "I don't know if there's a regulation on it.
Probably not. No law or regulation says 'don't do it,' so everyone's
doing it. The laws in China are like that, aren't they? If there's no
accident, there won't be any regulation."

Most local feed companies do not admit that they use melamine. But
last Friday here in Zhangqiu, a fast-growing industrial city southeast
of Beijing, a pair of animal feed producers explained in great detail
how they purchase low-grade wheat, corn, soybean or other proteins and
then mix in small portions of nitrogen-rich melamine, whose chemical
properties give a bag of animal feed an inflated protein level under
standard tests.

"If you add it in small quantities, it won't hurt the animals," said
one animal feed entrepreneur whose name is being withheld to protect
him from prosecution.

The man - who works in a small animal feed operation that consists
of a handful of storage and mixing areas - said he has mixed melamine
into animal feed for years.

We've always suspected that this problem went back further than Menu
Foods and this article confirms our suspicions. Again, we may never
know the degree of deaths and illnesses in pets as many have long died
and evidence has been lost.