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U.S. To Start Random Melamine Tests On Some Food

By Pritzker | Ruohonen

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) said this week it will begin testing sample batches of meat and poultry products to check for melamine, a chemical contaminant in food that has sickened more than 50,000 Chinese children this year.

With melamine showing up recently in some food products imported to the United States, FSIS said it would be “prudent” to do a small amount of sampling of products collected at retail stores.The random testing will begin in about two weeks and last 12 weeks.

In an official notice to investigators, the FSIS said sampling will focus on meat and poultry products that contain milk-derived ingredients such as non-fat dried milk, casein, whey, evaporated milk and milk powder.

The agency named the following five types of retail products for testing: Baby food containing meat or poultry; hot dogs and other cooked sausages; breaded chicken nuggets; meatballs; pizza snacks and meat or poultry wrapped in dough. The initiative is being undertaken with support from the Food Emergency Response Network laboratory at Athens, Georgia.

Melamine is a nitrogen-based chemical widely used in plastics manufacturing. It entered the milk supply in China because unscrupulous producers wanted to artificially inflate protein levels The scandal was one of the biggest food safety stories of the year..

Full post as published by Food Poisoning Law Blog on December 12, 2008 (boomark / email).