China toxic egg scandal spreads (3 more brands)

[Eugene]

Source: BBC News

Page last updated at 07:27 GMT,
Thursday, 30 October 2008

China toxic egg scandal spreads

Three more Chinese brands of chicken's eggs have
been found to contain high levels of the chemical
melamine.

-snip-

Officials were reportedly aware of the contamination
a month earlier.

-snip-

Media ban

A newspaper in Beijing reports that the sanitation
department of Liaoning province, in the north-east,
began investigating a local egg producer at the
beginning of October.

It then ordered a ban on any media interviews.

Local officials say melamine was illegally mixed
into chicken feed to make eggs look richer in
protein than they were, but central authorities have
not commented.

-snip-

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7699100.stm

[comtec]

1. WHAT!?!?!?!?

What the FUCK are CHINESE EGGS doing anywhere BUT IN CHINA?!?!?!

[dipsydoodle]

3. It not necessarily

whole eggs which are exported - more likely dried product of some description for use as binders etc. Just saying - not approving.

[arikara]

21. Or they use them as ingredients in prepared foods

such as noodles and baked stuff, that's if you can call it food at this point.

[GliderGuider]

5. The contaminated eggs appear to have only been found in mainland China and Hong Kong

So far.

Chinese egg products are a real source of worry for the rest of the world, though.

You really have to wonder about a species that contaminates its own food supply.
I have this mental image of two bacteria chatting in a petri dish:

B1: "Sure is crowded in here lately!"
B2: "Yeah, and that last bit of agar I ate made me feel sick too."
B1: "I wonder what's going on?"
B2: "Oh, don't worry so much, I'm sure somebody has things under control..."

[PSPS]

9. How do we know? Bush's FDA would hide any news of it here.

Has the bush FDA issued any statement about these egg products not being in the US?

[Demeter]

2. I Waiting for the Political Fallout

China in flames--assuming there are any healthy people left to protest....

[nebenaube]

4. You know

They don't report this shit to their population, they find and punish it and everyone else that's using it just keeps using it because then don't have a clue that it's causing problems. It must be one of those features (defects) of totalitarian societies, not unlike the false efficiencies of fascism.

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

6. And this is why I won't eat food from China

[tclambert]

11. But I like Egg Foo Yung, and Egg Drop Soup n/t

[Romulox]

7. "Most Favored Nation". Thanks Bill Clinton, Al Gore! nt

[NashVegas]

8. China Sounds a Lot Like Late 19th/Early 20th Century America

From a consumer & food safety standpoint.

[Ganja Ninja]

10. Lord knows what other products these eggs are used in.

We need to stop importing any and all food from China. This type of crap is happening all too often.

[tclambert]

12. HOW do you get melamine into an EGG?

Oh, in the chicken feed of the mama. This means Chinese chicken meat will also be contaminated. What do you wanna bet it's in pig feed, too?

I think it's time to cut out the middle man and just eat utility shelves.

[Quantess]

19. Just imagine how much melamine those chickens have in their bodies.

The poor birds must be saturated with melamine.

This morning I ate breakfast cereal out of a melamine bowl. Those chickens may as well be eating the bowl.

[jmowreader]

22. Your melamine bowl is safe...

They make the plastic by mixing formaldehyde with melamine, then letting it polymerize. When they're done, there's neither free melamine nor free formaldehyde in the finished resin.

[Quantess]

23. I feel perfectly safe eating FROM a melamine bowl.

These poor chickens are being fed the bowl itself!

[Coventina]

13. Report: China's animal feed tainted with melamine

Source: International Herald-Tribune

BEIJING: Animal feed producers in China commonly add the industrial chemical melamine to their products to make them appear higher in protein, state media reported Thursday, an indication that the scope of the country's latest food safety scandal could extend beyond milk and eggs.

The practice of mixing melamine into animal feed is an "open secret" in the industry, the Nanfang Daily newspaper reported in an article that was republished on the Web sites of the official Xinhua News Agency and the Communist Party mouthpiece People's Daily.

Publicizing such a problem is rare for the Chinese media and appears to be a tacit admission by China's central government that melamine contamination is widespread.

The news comes after four brands of Chinese eggs were found to be contaminated with melamine, which agriculture officials have speculated came from adulterated feed given to hens. The discovery of the tainted eggs followed on the heels of a similar crisis involving compromised dairy products that sent tens of thousands of children to the hospital and was linked to the deaths of four infants.



Read more: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/10/30/asia/AS-China-Tainted-Food.php

---

Seems we have finally found the root of the problem...this was suspected previously, but now seems to be confirmed....

[no_hypocrisy]

14. So what else are we unknowingly eating that's growing kidney stones by the day?

[crikkett]

17. just about anything from a box, and instant anything.

[Ian David]

15. This is great news!

Now we know they're not intentionally trying to poison us!

They're really just THAT incompetent after all!






:sarcasm:

[denverbill]

16. I don't understand why the government doesn't just shut down the melamine manufacturers.

Or at minimum, force them to provide a list of customers.

This is really ridiculous.

I can't believe that this long after the first melamine alert, it's STILL going on.

[noonwitch]

18. It reminds me of the PBB nightmare in Michigan

When I was a kid in the 70s, the USDA accidentally mixed fire retardant in with the cattle feed that they sold in Michigan. We all got exposed to a dangerous chemical. Nobody talks much about it anymore, but it wiped out family dairy farms in our state. In 1979, when I had 9th grade health class, our teacher told us girls that we should have our breast milk checked for PBB prior to breast-feeding babies. By the time my sister had the class 3 years later, they weren't saying that anymore.

Metro Detroit was not impacted the way the rest of the state was, because Sealtest, their largest supplier of milk at the time, bought their milk out of state. Metro Grand Rapids, where I grew up, was seriously affected, as were Flint, Kalamazoo, northern and western Michigan in general. It was terrifying to me as a child-I was old enough (2nd or 3rd grade) to understand what it was, and the news shows were reporting how the farmers had to take their cows to "kill sites", where they were killed, then buried in cement vaults, to prevent the poison from getting in the ground water.

[arikara]

20. How in hell do they "accidentally mix"

fire retardant in with cattle feed??? You'd think that grains and chemicals wouldn't even be in the same plant or distribution center to begin with.

[Eugene]

24. BBC (10/31): Chinese melamine scandal widens

Source: BBC News

Page last updated at 11:52 GMT, Friday, 31 October 2008

Chinese melamine scandal widens

The toxic chemical melamine is probably being routinely
added to Chinese animal feed, state media has reported.

Correspondents say the unusually frank reports in several
news outlets are an admission that contamination could
be widespread throughout the food chain.

-snip-

'Open secret'

Several state newspapers carried reports on Thursday
suggesting that the addition of melamine to animal feed
was widespread.

The feed industry seems to have acquiesced to agree on
using the chemical to reduce production costs while
maintaining the protein count for quality inspections,"
the state-run China Daily said in an editorial.

"We cannot say for sure if the same chemical has made
its way into other types of food," the newspaper added.

-snip-

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7701477.stm

[Crowman1979]

25. They'll probably purge business owners Mao-style if this keeps up.

[Coventina]

26. China melamine scandal prompts mass chicken cull

http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-36252520081031

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese farmers, hurt by a spreading melamine scandal, slaughtered tens of thousands of chickens, state media said on Friday, as authorities in Shanghai began checks on feed producers for local fisheries.

Shanghai's Livestock Office would check more than 100 feed producers in the city, and promised tests for the city's seafood products if any feed were found to contain melamine, the Shanghai Daily newspaper said on Friday.

Melamine is a compound used in making plastic chairs and other things, but is often added to food to cheat nutrition tests.

At least four children died and tens of thousands were made ill from drinking milk formula adulterated with melamine this year.