An interesting story from JapanToday.com indicates that melamine found in Saizeriya’s pizzas is the result of dough made with whole milk powder coming from China.
The 5.7 tons of tainted frozen dough, which is equivalent to about 48,000 pizzas, was made by a Chinese company based in Guangdong Province, and imported by the food company The Best Food Creators in Tokyo, the health ministry said. During the inspection requested by the ministry and conducted by Saizeriya, based in Yoshikawa, Saitama Prefecture, 4.3 parts per million of melamine was detected.
I am wondering when we are going to start detecting melamine in American imports from China. In the global economy, it is only a matter of time. The difficulty, much like the lead paint found in toys originating in China, is that regulatory agencies like the FDA cannot control everything that comes into our country.
Yet, since the melamine issue is widespread in China-and probably blown a bit out of proportion; it makes good news to show fault with China (bad news is good news: remember the tainted bottled water in New York? How about the tainted Tylenol in the late 80’s? It’s not just a China thing)-it only makes sense that somehow it would make it into the processed food ingredients.
What is melamine anyway? Ever eat off a Melmac plate in the 70’s? Before the advent of microwaves, it was a pretty decent resinous plastic for making dishes. It turns out that it has hundreds of uses. Oh, and, it’s really toxic.
