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The Melamine Crisis

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Tong View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Tong Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: The Melamine Crisis
    Posted: 22 Mar 2010 at 11:28pm
Yeah, you are right!

Farmer education, media, regulation and testing, all of them are important.

I think that I could do something to improve farmer education and comsumer education.

China must learn a lot from UK and Ireland.

I notice that many food producers in UK and Ireland use sustainable feature to market their products, which is also of high quality.

Recenly, I have read about the organic box scheme and soil association in UK. I found that the whole agriculture and food market is very developed there.
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michael View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote michael Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 Mar 2010 at 11:27pm
Tong

Firstly there are few countries that have not had serious consumer issues regarding food, melamine just happens to be the most recent. There will be others!

Looking at a number of global food adulteration issues one can identify common issues including greed and ignorance.

Farmers in the UK and Ireland generally produce milk of very high quality and are very well informed about the relevant science and technology. They have also become much more consumer and market conscious particularly over the past 20 years. This coupled with governmental and buyer quality standards/specifications and a very alert news media have probably all helped to ensure quality food is produced.

Farmer education has been a governmental priority both in the UK and Ireland where extensive extension education programmes exist. I think the importance of this and of farmer organisations cannot be overstated. Now farmers are starting to use their high quality of production and this includes animal welfare standards to market their products. We have seen a good example of this recently regarding beef. Imports from a major south American country to the EU have now been stopped arguably due to quality arguments advocated by EU- European Union-farmer groups.

If you want to understand this better then take a look at the following URLs :
http://www.arthurrankcentre.org.uk/projects/rusource_briefings/firm04/193.pdf and
http://www.fao.org/docrep/w5830e/w5830e03.htm .

I can't comment on farmer education in China, how active your media is in exploring food quality abuses and how extensive your governmental testing regimes are but farmer education coupled with regulation and testing, and a diligent news media are likely go a long way to wards solving quality problems in China.
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Tong View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Tong Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 Mar 2010 at 11:27pm
Ireland could produce high quality dairy food.

Raw milk quality is also excellent!

How does Ireland achieve these?

US newspaper said that china have a long way to go...
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Tong View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Tong Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 Mar 2010 at 11:27pm
yeah I hope so

Thanks.

These days more and more food was found that contain melamine, such as UHT milk, Yogurt.

The detection activity is going on...
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michael View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote michael Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 Mar 2010 at 11:27pm
Tong

The European news media suggest that the melamine problem has largely been caused by dairy farmers adding the compound to milk where it raises the apparent protein concentration. I understand that the deaths of the babies that have drunk the contaminated milk has been due to renal failure. Once your regulatory people develop good methods of detection, introduce the necessary legislation and educate your farmers the problem will become less serious.

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Tong View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Tong Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 Mar 2010 at 11:26pm
Yeah, I have translated a part of that article, it is very useful!

I have read about the pet food crisis in 2007 in USA. Pet food producer used wheat gluten and rice protein, which contain melamine, from china.

These days, I writed a lot of articles on melamine crisis, the situation may be worse...

animal feed, pet food, flour and related food, milk powder and related products, sausage... ,all the food contain protein may contain melamine in China.

 
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michael View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote michael Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 Mar 2010 at 11:26pm
Hi Tong

Yes the situation concerning melamine has been reported fairly widely in the trade press and scientific media.

There is an interesting article in Wikipedia -please see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melamine .

I have seen literature that suggests that melamine can be formed in plants from cyromazine. I don't know if it can end up in milk from this source. However I suspect we will soon know whether this happens.

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Tong View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Tong Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 Mar 2010 at 11:26pm
...

I think all of you have heard the melamine crisis in China.

These days, more and more dairy foods in China are found that contain different degree of melamine. These products include milk powder, ice cream and many food which take milk powder as ingredient.

baby formula made by Sanlu dairy contains >2500mg melamine per kilo.

It is said that some milk supplier added melamine and water into milk to get more money.

For years, many chinese feed manufacturers added melatine into pig, poultry and fish feed to increase the apparent protein content.

(1)If cow feed contains melatine, can melatine transfer into milk???

Melamine is a metabolite of cyromazine, a pesticide. It is formed in the body of mammals who have ingested cyromazine.

(2)can cyromazine be a source of melamine in milk???
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