The Creepy China Food Syndrone. Why?

Take two parts of junk science, add a healthy dash of legal mumbo-jumbo and government insanity and you come up with some interesting results. Two industrial elements, asbestos and lead in paint have cost the US economy hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars. Here are two little tidbits:

2005 Study Quantifies Benefits and Costs of Asbestos Litigation Reform

New York, 26 April 2005 -- A new study by NERA Economic Consulting estimates that asbestos litigation has cost the US economy $343 billion to date and that proposed trust fund legislation would save $71 billion in future administrative and legal costs alone. The US Senate is currently considering a bill that would remove claims from the court system and establish a $140 billion asbestos trust fund, financed by defendants and insurers.

Hysteria and junk science over lead paint can cost $15,000 to remove per house. Lead paint was banned in 1979. There are over 60,000,000 US houses that can be affected, plus schools and public buildings. That is a $900 billion government and lawyer made problem.

Now you can argue over the wisdom and the hows and wheres and whys over these two industrial components. We never intentionaly ate them. You can plead ignorance. The use and consequences of use were unknown, hard to stop and are now very expensive to correct, but the latest indignity from China of industrial chemicals intentionally used to adulterate food additives...Melamine, the only place in the kitchen for that was supposed to be to make your kitchen cabinets. The sick cynical freak that put it in food additives, produced in China, and sold to the US should be shot. Why is he still alive?

This should not be news to anyone but, we do not need to import any food additives from China. None. Not now, not ever.

Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.

BEIJING, China (CNN) -- The manager of the Chinese company suspected of selling tainted wheat flour to the United States has been detained for nearly two weeks outside Beijing, CNN has learned.

Tian Feng is the manager of Binzhou Futian Biology Technology, which U.S. pet food distributors have identified as the company that sold them wheat flour -- mislabeled as wheat gluten or rice protein concentrate -- containing melamine and related products.

Tian's company was shut by local police on April 25, the day he was detained.

"I didn't do anything wrong," Tian said in an interview with CNN from the detention center in Binzhou in China's eastern Shandong Province.

Dressed in a white T-shirt and orange prison vest, Tian said, "I don't know about melamine. I don't even know what this melamine is. I have never heard of anyone using it." (just a coincidence)

Under Chinese law, police can hold Tian for 30 days while the investigation continues. After that, he must be tried or released.

In addition to being used in pet food, the tainted flour also made its way into feed for some 20 million poultry, thousands of hogs, and an unknown number of farmed fish, the Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday.

The FDA has said the threat to humans is remote. ( not as dangerous as second hand cigarette smoke no doubt.)

While the FDA has received reports of more than 4,000 pet deaths related to the recall, it has confirmed the deaths of only 17 cats and dogs. Agency officials have said they do not plan to investigate the thousands of reports of deaths they have received allegedly caused by the tainted food products. (Say again)

U.S. food authorities suspect melamine and cyuranic acid -- a chemical used in swimming pools -- were mixed into the flour because the nitrogen-rich compounds would make it appear that the flour contained more protein than it really did.

Researchers say that when melamine is combined with cyuranic acid, crystals can form in the kidneys, leading to organ failure.

Original reports cited tainted rice protein concentrate and wheat gluten as the suspected compounds. But authorities said Tuesday that tests have shown simple wheat flour was the culprit.

Dr. David Acheson, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's assistant commissioner for food protection, said Tuesday that officials suspect the Chinese company substituted wheat flour for wheat gluten and rice-protein concentrate, then attempted to make them appear to be the protein-rich substances by adulterating them. ( Hardly worth investigating, you think?)

Melamine and related compounds each contain high levels of nitrogen. Some tests for protein, which is also rich in nitrogen, test only for the nitrogen.

The Chinese government banned the use of melamine as a food additive only last month.