It's getting really scary now

Contaminated Feed Could Affect Farms Nationwide

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/05/01/rec...try/index.html

Exerpt:

"The protein products from China that are affected include: wheat gluten,
rice gluten, rice protein, rice protein concentrate, corn gluten, corn
gluten meal, corn byproducts, soy protein, soy gluten proteins, and mung
bean protein, the FDA import alert dated April 27 said."

Hugs,

CatNipped

CatNipped wrote:
Contaminated Feed Could Affect Farms Nationwide

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/05/01/rec...try/index.html

Exerpt:

"The protein products from China that are affected include: wheat
gluten, rice gluten, rice protein, rice protein concentrate, corn
gluten, corn gluten meal, corn byproducts, soy protein, soy gluten
proteins, and mung bean protein, the FDA import alert dated April 27
said."

Hugs,

CatNipped

Frankly, I'm not going to worry about it. I could drive myself crazy if I
worried about everything that might be bad for me. I've no desire to drive
myself crazy, so screw it

Jill

CatNipped wrote:

Contaminated Feed Could Affect Farms Nationwide

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/05/01/rec...try/index.html

Exerpt:

"The protein products from China that are affected include: wheat gluten,
rice gluten, rice protein, rice protein concentrate, corn gluten, corn
gluten meal, corn byproducts, soy protein, soy gluten proteins, and mung
bean protein, the FDA import alert dated April 27 said."

Hugs,

CatNipped

Netscapes news headlines today included one about the
rejected melanine containing pet food having been widely fed
to chickens destined for market as broilers and fryers!
(Wonder where KFC and other fast-food outlets get theirs?)

On Wed, 02 May 2007 08:02:12 -0500, CatNipped wrote:

Contaminated Feed Could Affect Farms Nationwide

Am I being overly paranoid, or are others starting to wonder whether the
grain contamination might have been a deliberate attempt to poison our
food sources?

Daniel Mahoney wrote:

On Wed, 02 May 2007 08:02:12 -0500, CatNipped wrote:


Contaminated Feed Could Affect Farms Nationwide


Am I being overly paranoid, or are others starting to wonder whether the
grain contamination might have been a deliberate attempt to poison our
food sources?

That taking care of animal sources, while the mysterious
fungus that seems to be wiping out the world's honey-bees
does for vegetable sources? (Our urban civilization does
not realize how much of our food supply depends upon
pollination - largely by bees!)

Daniel Mahoney wrote:

On Wed, 02 May 2007 08:02:12 -0500, CatNipped wrote:

Contaminated Feed Could Affect Farms Nationwide

Am I being overly paranoid, or are others starting to wonder whether the
grain contamination might have been a deliberate attempt to poison our
food sources?

I've wondered about this almost since the beginning - but then, I do tend
toward the paranoid generally, so that's probably not very reassuring,
unless you'd rather be paranoid than right. (It's kind of a toss-up in my
experience!)

Actually, it's now believed that the contamination *was* deliberate. But
that doesn't mean it was an act of terrorism. I think it was more like good
old-fashioned corporate greed - they adulterated the grain to boost its
protein content, and make more money while spending less to produce the
stuff. (Although how a chemical that's used to make plastic registers as
protein is a mystery to me. Any chemists - Yowie? - care to explain?)

Joyce

"EvelynVogtGamble(Divamanque)" wrote:

That taking care of animal sources, while the mysterious
fungus that seems to be wiping out the world's honey-bees
does for vegetable sources? (Our urban civilization does
not realize how much of our food supply depends upon
pollination - largely by bees!)

That'd be cutting off noses to spite faces, though - if the *entire
world's* honey bees die off. Hard to believe that one's deliberate. Why
aren't we looking at environmental causes? Lord knows we pollute the
environment enough. And then there's genetic modification of produce,
which could have an effect on fungal growths. Agribusiness has no idea
what they've been getting into. Chaos theory, you know? Jeff Goldblum
was right.

Joyce

it's now believed that the contamination *was* deliberate. But that
doesn't mean it was an act of terrorism. I think it was more like good
old-fashioned corporate greed - they adulterated the grain to boost its
protein content, and make more money while spending less to produce the
stuff. (Although how a chemical that's used to make plastic registers as
protein is a mystery to me. Any chemists - Yowie? - care to explain?)

It contains nitrogen. The simplest way to measure the protein content
of a food is just to burn it and measure the proportion of nitrogen in
the gases given off. Since melamine is inert to most living things and
chemically stable for most of the processing a foodstuff is likely to
get, it makes commercial sense as an adulterant.

(Splodge has just jumped on my lap to help me write this. Since he's
got coeliac disease, he never eats catfood with added cereals and can
say I Told You So. Apparently the way to write that in Cat is a lot
of whitespace from holding the spacebar down with your tail).

============== j-c ====== @ ====== purr . demon . co . uk ==============
Jack Campin: 11 Third St, Newtongrange EH22 4PU, Scotland | tel 0131 660 4760
http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/ for CD-ROMs and free | fax 0870 0554 975
stuff: Scottish music, food intolerance, & Mac logic fonts | mob 07800 739 557

On May 4, 4:21 am, wrote:
Daniel Mahoney wrote:

On Wed, 02 May 2007 08:02:12 -0500, CatNipped wrote:

Contaminated Feed Could Affect Farms Nationwide

Am I being overly paranoid, or are others starting to wonder whether the
grain contamination might have been a deliberate attempt to poison our
food sources?

I've wondered about this almost since the beginning - but then, I do tend
toward the paranoid generally, so that's probably not very reassuring,
unless you'd rather be paranoid than right. (It's kind of a toss-up in my
experience!)

Actually, it's now believed that the contamination *was* deliberate. But
that doesn't mean it was an act of terrorism. I think it was more like good
old-fashioned corporate greed - they adulterated the grain to boost its
protein content, and make more money while spending less to produce the
stuff. (Although how a chemical that's used to make plastic registers as
protein is a mystery to me. Any chemists - Yowie? - care to explain?)

Joyce

I don't know anything about the chemistry, but I was reading an online
article yesterday on the New Scientist web page on this issue. It
appears that there are several plausible explanations of how the
melamine got into the food, not the least of which is that it may be a
breakdown product of a routinely used pesticide.
Here is a link to that article:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/...f-us-pets.html
or
http://tinyurl.com/33fs74

I think that the evidence for deliberate poisoning of the food is
relatively weak and that it is far more likely to be the usual cause,
which is unforseen consequences of the chemicals we (in a global
sense) put onto our crops.

For what it's worth, the honeybee die-off thing is very serious and
the most credible explanation I've heard so far is, once again, side-
effects of wide-spread chemical (pesticide) use.

Tish

wrote:
Actually, it's now believed that the contamination *was* deliberate. But
that doesn't mean it was an act of terrorism. I think it was more like good
old-fashioned corporate greed - they adulterated the grain to boost its
protein content, and make more money while spending less to produce the
stuff. (Although how a chemical that's used to make plastic registers as
protein is a mystery to me. Any chemists - Yowie? - care to explain?)

Remember from biology class how all the sugars and carbs are
variations of C-H-O, and all the amino acids are variations of
C-H-O-N?