pet food recall obscuring poison in human food

Sometimes the biggest news stories are diversions, whether intentional or not. I think the most recent pet food recall (”most recent” because there has been a recall for most of each of the last five years) is distracting us from a larger and even more scary awakening that human food has been poisoned, as well. As the FDA keeps assuring us that eating melamine-tainted pork, chickens and fish is no big deal, evidence is emerging that Americans have been doing so for the better part of a year.
The New York Times has an article today on how contaminated animal feed is an “open secret” in China, and it’s looking incredibly likely that the human food supply has been contaminated (at least indirectly) for some time.

For years, producers of animal feed all over China have secretly supplemented their feed with the substance, called melamine, a cheap additive that looks like protein in tests, even though it does not provide any nutritional benefits, according to melamine scrap traders and agricultural workers here.

China is producing more and more of our food, including the grains that go in crackers and the feed we’re giving our factory farmed animals. How much of it has melamine in it? Is this really limited to the animal feed supply? How could we possibly know? Given that the U.S. pretty much has an open-door policy on food ingredients, it’s anyone’s guess.

In recent years, for instance, China’s food safety scandals have involved everything from fake baby milk formulas and soy sauce made from human hair to instances where cuttlefish were soaked in calligraphy ink to improve their color and eels were fed contraceptive pills to make them grow long and slim.

With the Wal-Martization of “organics,” and the resulting globalization of the food supply, stories such as this are going to get more common, not less, if we even find out about them at all. And standards in the United States aren’t exactly a model either, given that our feedlot animals routinely eat all manner of industrial “food” scraps, including candy bars and gum with the packages still on them.

Expect an increased clamor for tougher regulations. The ultimate regulatory system, however, is knowing who produces your food, and how, and those kind of direct relationships are what I’m after these days.

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