The Island of Dr Moreau

[rumpel]

It feels like an unwelcome but needed crash course on pet food and food manufacturing...

There are now so many articles shedding light on the manufacturing process of food and about the ingredients due to the massive pet food recall. As reported on CNN, FDA is checking whether the component melamine was "deliberately" placed for profit - well, as a lay person one would understand this to mean "sabotage" or "fraud for profit" some sort of "additive". At least I did. I don't know about the processes and never even much thought about it.

We all cook and bake to some degree, and when we pick up an item such as bread - we automatically assume the ingredients are pretty much the same as if I were to bake the bread. Wheat, salt, butter or oils, sugar etc. etc.
However, commercial production of this bread we vaguely understand to be quite different. One has to be a bio-chemist to understand all the other ingredients and why they are there.

As we have seen demonstrated with the pet food catastrophe, we can not trust the companies and it's suppliers on all levels, nor can we trust our government agencies to oversee and regulate. So the next best thing for a non biochemist, as myself is to avoid anything that has chemicals - going totally organic - cook from scratch. Who has the time, though? We don't even know whether those ingredients themselves are processed and engineered.

Yesterday I posted the investigative report: Network of 900 Advisory Panels Wields Unseen Power
which says:

WASHINGTON, March 29, 2007 — They counsel the Department of Defense on terrorism, help the National Institutes of Health dispense billions of dollars in grants and vet proposed food safety rules for the Department of Agriculture.

At least 900 committees, boards, commissions, councils and panels give advice to federal agencies and the White House, forming a vast but largely unnoticed network that influences policy throughout the government.

Some panels are packed with industry representatives, ensuring that other viewpoints go unheard. Members are added or removed for what appear to be political reasons. Subcommittees – also known as subpanels or working groups – are created to discuss matters behind closed doors. Records are sealed.

http://www.publicintegrity.org/shadow/report.aspx?aid=821

As the lab scientists are still scratching their heads trying to pinpoint exactly what component is in fact leading to such a catastrophic health risk, some professionals seem to have some inkling of what may be going on.

I would like to refer to 2 comments/articles as my understanding of "deliberately placed" totally changed it's meaning for me after reading the article By Dr. Michael W. Fox.

First of, he says the University of Guelph lab has confirmed the presence of of both contaminants, the rat poison aminopterin and melamine.

However he says in key points:

The Associated Press cited the Environmental Protection Agency as having identified melamine as a contaminant and byproduct of several pesticides, including cryomazine.

melamine reported to be as high as 6.6% by the FDA in samples of the wheat gluten

The wheat gluten imported from China was not for human consumption, because, I believe, it had been genetically engineered.

The ‘rat poison’ aminopterin is used in molecular biology as an anti-metabolite, folate antagonist, and in genetic engineering biotechnology as a genetic marker. This could account for its presence in this imported wheat gluten.

The ‘plastic’, ‘wood preservative’, contaminant melamine, the parent chemical for a potent insecticide cyromazine, could well have been manufactured WITHIN the wheat plants themselves as a genetically engineered pesticide.

So called ‘overexpression’ can occur when spliced genes that synthesize such chemicals become hyperactive inside the plant and result in potentially toxic plant tissues, lethal not just to meal worms and other crop pests, but to cats, dogs, birds, butterflies and other wildlife; and to their creators.

How else can one account for samples of pet food containing as much as 6% melamine? It was surely not mixed in such amounts when the wheat gluten was being processed, but rather was already in the wheat, along with the aminopterin genetic marker.

http://tedeboy.tripod.com/drmichaelwfox/id74.html

The other comes from Dr. R. J. Russell & the CTCA blogged on Itchmo

4. There is a possibility that is not denied by the FDA that a great many of

America’s pets are now suffering progressive asymptomatic kidney disease.

There is also a possibility that many people are in that same boat, albeit

with an absolutely larger kidney festooned with geometrically more tubules,

they could remain asymptomatic for quite a bit longer than either Fido or

Fluffy.

http://www.itchmo.com/read/breaking-wheat-gluten-importer-identified_20070403

It is not an additive or contamination I have envisioned - it is embedded in the actual process of growing and processing of wheat.

In closing, this is not just about wheat gluten - what about corn and soy gluten? Will we have to go through this again later, only to find out that all these more or less "engineered foods" in fact are quickly or slowly killing us?

It sounds more and more like we are exposed to a giant experiment, The Island of Dr Moreau.

[TheWraith]

1. Not this again.

This "evidence" is completely bogus. It's supposition and speculation, backed not by evidence but by six degrees of Kevin Bacon using something approaching high-school chemistry.

Despite what all the genetic engineering obsessors want to believe, there is absolutely no rational reason to believe genetically modified food has anything to do with this contamination. Period. The microtraces of Aminopterin were likely from rodent poison in China. It's also been determined that the melamine contamination was almost certainly introduced after the wheat gluten reached the US, in the hands of a company called ChemNutra.

[rumpel]

3. However it is also true that the Chinese company

produces pharma crop.

GE foods have such a short history, in addition, the way it is mixed into the food chain makes it almost impossible to trace.

GE foods the US regulators do not allow for human consumption are however free to be used for feed.

Furthermore the accidental mixing of pharma crop appears to be a great concern among scientists.

Speculative perhaps, but there is no evidence that it is not the cause either.

Do you have a source reporting on how ChemNutra managed to contaminate melamine after it came to the US? That is new information.

and do you consider someone with these credentials performing high school chemistry?

EDUCATION
Buxton College, Buxton, Derbyshire, England, 1951-1957
BVet Med, Royal Veterinary College, London, England,
1957-1962. Class medals in Animal Husbandry,
Pre-Clinical Studies and Pathology
Member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons
(MRCVS) 1962
PhD (Medicine) University of London, 1967
DSc (Ethology/Animal Behavior) University of London, 1976

WORK EXPERIENCE
House Surgeon, Cambridge University, College
of Veterinary Medicine, England, January -
September 1962
Post doctoral fellow, Jackson Laboratory, Bar Harbor,
ME, 1962-1964
Medical research associate, State Research Hospital,
Galesburg, IL, 1964-1967
Assistant Prof. of Biology and Psychology, 1967-1969
Associate Prof. of Psychology, Washington University,
St. Louis, MO, 1969-1976
Director, Institute for the Study of Animal Problems,
Washington, DC, 1976-1987
Scientific Director, The Humane Society of the United
States, Washington, DC, 1980-1987
Director, Center for Respect of Life and Environment,
Washington, DC, 1988-1990
Vice President, Bioethics and Farm Animal Protection, The
Humane Society of the United States, Washington, DC,
1988-1997
Senior Scholar, Bioethics, The Humane Society of the United States,
1997-2002

The concern is real, the effects are not fully known.

http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_environment/genetic_engineering/

[livvy]

2. Interesting articles.

I am so glad that I have never fed my pack any of the listed foods. I started feeding them only a few select brands, and homemade supplements after doing some research about 7 years ago into what was really in dog foods. What I learned turned my stomach. I'd much rather spend the extra dollars at the food bin, than at the vet's office. Dogs live such short lives, and give so much in the short time they are with us. The least I can do is try to make sure they stay healthy, and feel well for as long as I can, by feeding them the best quality I can afford. The Whole Dog Journal is a great resource on dog food products.
http://www.whole-dog-journal.com/index.html

I really wish they would stop screwing around with food, period. It is going to catch up with us, if it already hasn't. I believe that.

Look what they let us do to them...just so they can make us smile!

[rumpel]

4. lol

not that they particularly look amused - but especially the one with the overalls looks as if he's saying; "There they go again, hey, what's so funny"

I agree - and I am looking forward to Sen. Durbin's hearings and obviously resulting legislature discussions.