There are some more imported food ingredients being recalled (with the list looking like it could expand) and food makers may want to emphasize sources of their ingredients: http://www.fda.gov/opacom/7alerts.html Bill, it looks like the preliminary report you found last night panned out. The melamine was not from fertilizer. Instead it MAY have been purposely ADDED to the wheat gluten, the rice protein concentrate (though that bag was actually a different color from the ones without melamine and it clearly stated melamine as being present, and the corn product in South Africa TO MAKE THEM TEST THAT THEY HAD HIGHER PROTEIN LEVELS. In the People's Republic of China much is similar to the U.S. in the 50 and early 60s. Profit comes before safety in many things and the politicians are worried (correctly or incorrectly -- since politicians anywhere often are very out of touch with their own people and everyday life for the majority) that their own populace strongly places emphasis on income over safety. For those who think that the '50s were dancing in ice cream parlors, please, know they were also a time when most children has serious injuries from products that these days would be considered unsafe, when we didn't have the well designed seatbelts of today -- in fact often didn't have seat belts, when more died of their asthma and air pollution, when the unsafe compounds used in the home were even less safe than now, and when rivers would at times burn. The list of what was vastly unsafe could fill books. In fact, it HAS filled books. Not that there are not dangers these days. Heck, look at who managed to buy weaponry and use it in schools. Still, there were a lot of dangers that don't exist now,including many environmental ones. When the nearby Lilco power plant used to clean its stacks everyone had to be warned beforehand so that wash could come in, and those of use who lived nearby got a special cash amount regularly to repaint houses since the ash ate right through paint. No one thought of and no one had smoke stack scubbers to keep what came out cleaner. In the U.S. then belching smoke stacks were so much the symbol of progress and profit that they appeared in many corporate symbols and even in one state symbol till later (I've been told by relatives in that state.). China is like that now. This revelation could deeply impact their ability to export food stuffs for a while, though, and maybe it will be a wake-up call in all countries that bad products damage profits, and that testing needs bucking up. http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=3058844&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312 BEGIN QUOTES from ABC April 19, 2007 -- For the first time, investigators are saying the chemical that has sickened and killed pets in the United States may have been intentionally added to pet food ingredients by Chinese producers. ... Chinese companies may have spiked products with the chemical melamine so that they would appear, in tests, to have more value as protein products. ... there is a possibility for another round of recalls. ... Melamine, which is used to make plastics in the United States and as a fertilizer in Asia, contains nitrogen. Nitrogen can appear to boost the level of protein in products. END QUOTES ARTICLE RECOMMENDED. There is, of course the question whether melamine levels may increase in animal tissues with repeated ingestion. Currently, some hogs are being checked, and since a corn product and perhaps some so far unspotted imported products may be involved that question may also apply to poultry and to feedlot animals in general. I don't know if any of those products are used in farmed fish, but since wheat gluten is used in some aquarium fish food it is possible that farmed fish may also need to be tested to see if the compound can accumulate in their tissues. Sukie (not a vet) Current FHL address: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth Recommended ferret health links: http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/ http://ferrethealth.org/archive/ http://www.afip.org/ferrets/index.html http://www.miamiferret.org/fhc/ http://www.ferretcongress.org/ http://www.trifl.org/index.shtml http://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html [Posted in FML 5584]