Health

Melamine Scandal Spreads Now It's Eggs

by Barbara McPherson | October 28, 2008 at 03:59 pm

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Just as the melamine milk scandal has started to cool, a new, massive recall of chicken eggs is underway. Walmart in China has started pulling its fresh eggs off the shelves. These eggs have been exported to Japan, Europe, Russia and Hong Kong. Possibly high amounts of melamine are in powdered eggs used in commercial baking.

Even more worrisome is the real possibility that this melamine pollution has infiltrated much of the food supply in China, a major exporter to the rest of the world.

Hong Kong finds twice the legal limit of melamine in eggs from a Chinese company that also exports to Europe and Japan. Fingers are pointed at the possible use of the substance in animal feeds and pesticides which is then absorbed by the meat and vegetables. The milk scandal widens as health authorities in Beijing discover that one child under the age of three in four was weaned on tainted milk.

The melamine-tainted eggs in question are produced by Hanwei Poultry Co., a leading egg-exporting company based in Dalian (Liaoning), and a major supplier to Hong Kong, which gets about 60 per cent of its eggs from the mainland. The group also exports eggs to Japan, Russia and Europe.

Now it would appear that cyromazine, a derivative of melamine, is widely used in pesticides and animal feed in China. Absorbed by plants it can end up in raw foods like meat and vegetables. This means that it might already be in the human food chain. The recently found tainted eggs might just be confirmation needed.

Wal-Mart pulled a brand of eggs from all its stores in China on Tuesday after tests in Hong Kong found they were tainted with the same toxic chemical blamed for sickening tens of thousands of babies.

Melamine can be absorbed by plants and animals. Vegetables and fruit may look safe but be contaminated with this poison. Farmed animals and fish may also absorb toxic levels of this chemical and pass it on to unwitting consumers.

UN Calls For China To Report On Melamine In Livestock Feed

BEIJING (AFP)--A U.N. agency called Tuesday for China to immediately disclose if an industrial chemical found in dairy products had been used in livestock feed and contaminated the wider food chain. The recent discovery of melamine in mainland chicken eggs sold in Hong Kong has triggered worries that the chemical was present in a wide range of foods such as farm-raised meats and fish, a U.N. official said.