frogblog

Poisonous food and dying babies is strictly a ‘far away in China’ sort of thing, even if it happens to be large New Zealand company embroiled in the scandal?  Right? We can look sadly on and shake our heads despondently at Chinese officials and businessmen who didn’t respond fast enough or allow the public to know what was going on?  Apparently not.

Because the New Zealand Food Safety Authority has found one New Zealand manufacturer has a melamine contamination.  But it’s not telling us which one. As Sue Kedgley notes:

The Authority’s lack of action must be leaving Prime Minister Helen Clark red-faced, as it directly contradicts her statement, made when the scandal was uncovered, that: ‘…I think the first inclination (for the Chinese authorities) was to try and put a towel over it and deal with it without an official recall. That is never what we would do in New Zealand.’

Towards the bottom of the NZPA story on the melamine story is this bit:

In New Zealand-made foods one potential contamination pathway the authority is expected to check is whether the melamine is a residue from pesticide sprays.

Chan King-ming, an associate professor of biochemistry at a Chinese university, told the New Scientist magazine yesterday that cyromazine, a derivative of melamine, has been widely used in China as a pesticide.

In New Zealand, cyromazine has been used in a pesticide called Veterzine, and in June, the NZFSA published a list of contaminant levels it will allow in animal products, and specified a maximum permissible level of cyromazine and melamine in 0.3mg/kg in sheepmeats, and 0.15mg/kg in poultry and eggs.

According to Prof Chan, cyromazine is absorbed into plants as melamine and has spread through the food chain in animal feeds.

“It is not just in milk products, but also in farm products and animal feed, fish diet,” he said.

Associate professor in applied biology and chemical technology at Hong Kong Polytechnic University Peter Yu said that though it was known melamine caused kidney stones and problems in the kidney, there could also be other ill effects in the longterm.

“These are ingredients that shouldn’t be in food,” he said.

If that’s occurring that is a huge amount of New Zealand food that is potentially compromised by pesticides.