Thread: Small Melamine Amounts in Formula Are Safe, FDA Says

Small Melamine Amounts in Formula Are Safe, FDA Says

By Catherine Larkin

Nov. 28 (Bloomberg) -- The industrial chemical melamine is safe in baby formula in small amounts, U.S. regulators said, revising their earlier recommendations.

The Food and Drug Administration’s discovery of melamine and a byproduct of the chemical in two U.S.-made formulas doesn’t pose health risks, said Stephen Sundlof, director of the agency’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, on a conference call today with reporters. The FDA had said before finding the contamination that melamine may be harmful in infant formula in any amount.

The FDA began blocking Chinese milk products from entering U.S. ports this month after melamine-tainted milk sickened more than 50,000 children in China since September. Members of Congress and consumer groups criticized the agency earlier this week for not publicly disclosing that a formula made in the U.S. had also tested positive for “traceâ€

There should be zero percent of industrial chemicals in our food supplies. It just shows how wonderful all this free trade is, buying ingredients from countries that have no safety standards like we do. Manufacturers often have no idea where the ingredients come from, and distributors may often mix the same ingredient from different locations into one big pot to fill an order.

Originally Posted by vortex

There should be zero percent of industrial chemicals in our food supplies. It just shows how wonderful all this free trade is, buying ingredients from countries that have no safety standards like we do. Manufacturers often have no idea where the ingredients come from, and distributors may often mix the same ingredient from different locations into one big pot to fill an order.

If I had a baby, I'd be starting a class-Action suit. This is unexceptable!
It's a plastic that is added in to food to falsely up the protein amount.
So the nutrition is not up to par either. Screw that...
We are 1/2 way to a 3rd world country and by 6-months we'll be so sick of having more verbal crap shoved up our butts!

Small Melamine Amounts in Formula Are Safe, FDA Says

EVEN A TRACE IS UNACCEPTABLE! I would never feed a baby formula that the FDA says is OKAY in SMALL AMOUNTS. What has become of the FDA anyway?! I thought this agency was formed in order to protect us.

The obvious question is, why put poison stuff in food (or toys or toiletries) anyways? The answers we are getting amount to a confession of cheating for monetary gain. Why are we doing business with these folks again?

What a load of BS, we are NOT stupid out here. I am beginning the FDA is there to brainwash us, more than protect us.

Personally, I think the FDA is toeing the administration line. We have had years of weakening of any health and environmental regulations under this gang who cares nothing about the peons who need to breathe clean air and drink clean water. Their major focus has been assuring corporate profitability, which produces lots of contributions to the party.
Christine Todd Whitman, head of the EPA, quit, later saying that she was pressured into many denials of wrongdoing:
Party Girl
Christie Whitman's forthcoming book assails GOP's rightward lurch
By Amanda Griscom Little
14 Jan 2005
When U.S. EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman left the agency in 2003, she said she wanted to "spend more time with her family." If you believed that, Bernard Kerik's got a tax-free nanny he'd like to sell you.

Those skeptical of Whitman's resignation excuse may soon have their suspicions confirmed. It seems she quit because she was hoodwinked and hamstrung by her superiors. Unable to implement her agenda at EPA, she was effectively captaining a ship that was on permanent autopilot.

Such is the implication of Whitman's new political memoir-cum-manifesto It's My Party Too: The Battle for the Heart of the GOP and the Future of America, due to hit bookstores on Jan. 27.

Enviros may be disappointed to find the EPA dish rather scanty -- only one chapter is devoted to her experiences at the agency. The rest of the book examines the "rightward lurch" of the GOP under the Bush administration, which is causing a rift between moderate and hard-right Republicans along several fault lines, the environment chief among them. Whitman fears this rift could threaten the long-term viability of the Republican Party.

The thesis is compelling, particularly coming from a woman long dismissed as a Bush loyalist who quit with her tail between her legs rather than stand up for her principles. But don't expect a scathing tell-all.

True to Whitman's conflict-averse nature, her book is decidedly gentler in its Bush bashing than the exposés published by other ex-admin officials, such as former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, whose story in The Price of Loyalty (written by Ron Suskind) contains a damning behind-the-scenes view of the guarded management of the Bush White House, and former White House terrorism adviser Richard Clarke, whose Against All Enemies lays bare the administration's inept handling of pre-9/11 counterterrorism efforts.

Whitman doesn't go so far as to skewer her former employers -- she jabs them, gingerly, even as she reveals behavior that deserves real skewering. For instance, take the moment when President Bush reversed his campaign promise to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions and then asked her to take the heat. Or the moment when the president pulled out of Kyoto without agreeing to pursue a compromise, making her a laughingstock among environmental ministers worldwide. Or the moment when the White House refused to give her the authority to investigate the safety of the thousands of chemical facilities in America vulnerable to terrorist attack.
Or the pressures she felt from above to weaken the new-source review clause of the Clean Air Act: "People became focused on reforming NSR, with some intent on getting rid of it altogether. The vice president seemed particularly eager about the issue, and he called me on several occasions, even tracking me down when I was on vacation in Colorado, to press his view [on] NSR reform."

Most revealing of all, perhaps, is her description of her appointment to serve on the Dick Cheney's energy task force, "an eye-opening encounter with just how obsessed so many of those in the energy industry, and in the Republican Party, have become with doing away with environmental regulation."
But never once does she express anger -- nor, stranger still, voice opposition to the powers that be. The book's title, It's My Party Too, seems to imply that Whitman will cry if she wants to, yet the book itself -- like Whitman's EPA tenure -- contains barely a whimper. There's more defense than offense in her eagerly anticipated counterattack.

Things get particularly confusing when Whitman gives the benefit of the doubt to the very people who drove her to throw in the towel: "The Bush administration deserves credit for some important environmental measures, including ... committing to increasing wetlands in the United States, and tackling mercury emissions from power plants" (though environmentalists have found plenty on which to fault the admin in these two areas).

Even harder to swallow is her claim that Bush has a real grasp of the climate crisis: "The ultimate irony in all this was that the president did truly believe that global climate change was a significant problem," she writes, adding that he's earmarked more funding for climate-change research than any previous administration (a blatant stall tactic, say critics, to avoid actually addressing the problem).

When Whitman does express disapproval, it's in wistful, pinched passages such as the following: "I thought we had an opportunity really to accomplish something," she writes. "To leave America's air cleaner, its water purer, and its land better protected than we had found it. That belief was short-lived."
Here's another doozy: "Karl Rove told me ... that I would be one of just three cabinet officers who would help determine whether the president would be reelected. I took Rove to mean that the work I would do in building a strong record on the environment would help the president build on his base by attracting moderate swing voters. As it turned out, I don't seem to have understood Karl correctly."

Readers encountering passages like these may be understandably overwhelmed by the "duh!" factor. That said, Whitman's emotional restraint is effective in the way a 19th century British romance novel is effective: The reader is so deprived of climactic moments that even a clipped expression of disappointment is strangely gratifying -- like the instant when elbows brush, or a gentleman sees a lady's ankle exposed and swoons.

Really, what more could one expect from a woman descended from a family that is, as she describes it, "the embodiment of what was once known as the Republican eastern establishment"? The GOP pedigree of Whitman's family, the Todds, is up there with the Rockefellers and the Bushes themselves.

Herein lies the power of Whitman's book, according to Jim DiPeso, policy director at Republicans for Environmental Protection. "She's the farthest thing from a malcontent or an upstart. She has always played her political cards very cautiously because she has deep roots and credibility in the GOP," he told Muckraker. "Obviously it goes counter to her personality to publish something like this."

What Whitman lacks in a pointed, specific attack on Bush's environmental policies, she makes up for with her broader argument: "We stand at a historic juncture in American politics, a critical crossroads for both the Republican Party and for the nation." She condemns the Bush administration for embracing "social fundamentalism," which she says wrongly tramples on the personal right of Republicans to be pro-choice, advocate stem-cell research, and support gay marriage. And she argues that right-wing ideology flouts the deeply rooted Republican ethos of conservation.

Eric Schaeffer, the former EPA enforcement chief who quit during Whitman's tenure to protest the Bush administration's efforts to weaken his division, is one of the few EPA expats who has gotten his hands on an advance copy of the memoir. He has mixed feelings about it, but says it validates his complaints. "On the one hand, I felt like 'Where were you when we needed you? Why didn't you stand up to them when they bullied you around? Why didn't you quit in protest?,'" he told Muckraker. "On the other, I felt like she did a very brave thing [in writing the book]. I never expected her to stand up and lay it on the table, to confirm what a lot of people inside the agency and out have been saying the past four years. It's good to have her on our side of the battle."

Given the timing of the book -- which was slated to be published after the presidential election, concurrent with the inauguration -- Whitman clearly had no intention of trying to prevent Bush's reelection. In fact, she campaigned for him.

But it seems she wants to ally herself with moderates like Arizona Sen. John McCain, New York Gov. George Pataki, and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (all pro-environment), staking her reputation and political future on the hopes that they will remake the Republican Party in 2008. This, at least, no environmentalist would begrudge her.


http://www.grist.org/news/muck/2005/...ittle-whitman/

Oh My God! These lying sacks of shit! This means all of us with children using those products have been likely given melamine contaminated products to their babies???

They knew this in September and they are just now telling us near the beginning of December?????

Am I reading this right????


W

Chemical Found In Popular Baby Formulas
Melamine Linked To Baby Deaths, Illnesses In China

POSTED: 6:25 pm CST November 26, 2008
UPDATED: 6:37 pm CST November 26, 2008


OKLAHOMA CITY -- A federal investigation found that four baby formulas sold in the United States may contain the same chemical that killed four babies in China and made 1,300 children sick.

The Food and Drug Administration found the products contain tiny amounts of melamine, a plastic material.

The products include Johnson's Enfamil Lipil with iron and Nestle's Good Start Supreme Infant Formula with iron, two of the most popular brands in the U.S.

Doctors said that while the amounts in each formula are very small, they do exceed the legal limit.

Nestle's Peptamen Junior Medical Food and Nestle's Junior Fiber also contain melamine, but these products have amounts that are within the legal limit.

"These are probably safe limits," said pediatrician Dr. Kelly Stephens. "But there aren't any studies to show how much plastic you can have in your diet and not be harmed."

When an individual swallows melamine, it goes into the kidneys and turns into a small plastic pellet. The pellets are easy for an adult to pass, but not a baby.

Doctors said parents should watch for blood in their child's urine, vomiting, pain in the area of the kidneys and if the baby suddenly becomes ill for no obvious reason.

So far, there haven't been any reports of children in the United States becoming sick because of melamine.

Stephens said parents can still keep feeding the two formulas to their children, but may want to switch to another brand to be safe.

http://www.koco.com/news/18155847/detail.html

FDA Center for Food Safety & Applied Nutrition
Report
May 25, 2007
Interim Melamine and Analogues Safety/Risk Assessment
http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/melamra.html