Pirate’s Gold Premium Chocolate Coins candies were indeed removed from store shelves — in Canada.

“The Pirates Gold Coins were not distributed in the United States,” Stephanie Kwisnek, spokeswoman for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, said in an e-mail response to questions from The Daily Journal.

On Oct. 8, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, similar to the U.S. FDA, issued a warning about the candy, which is manufactured in China and distributed by Maryland-based Sherwood Brands.

“Some of the source ingredients in the candy were from China,” Marilyn Taylor of the food inspection agency told The Daily Journal Thursday. The candy was sold in Costco stores and other dollar and bulk stores, she said.

The FDA has a list of food sold in the United States that may be contaminated with melamine. Pirate’s Gold was not on the list.

Calls to Sherwood Brands were not returned. A letter on its Web site said the melamine contamination was isolated to products sold in Canada.

Kwisnek urged consumers to the FDA’s Web site, where they can find safety tips for Halloween candy and a link to information about melamine and the contaminated foods list: www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/kids/treats.html

~ Kristin Szremski

BEIJING — The industrial chemical melamine is commonly added to animal feed in China to make it appear higher in protein, state media reported Thursday, in what appeared to be a tacit admission by the government that contamination is widespread in the country’s food supply.

The practice of mixing melamine into animal feed is an “open secret” in the industry, the Nanfang Daily newspaper reported, describing a process of repackaging melamine scrap into an inexpensive product called “protein powder,” which is then sold to feed suppliers.

The Web sites of the official Xinhua News Agency and the Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily newspaper also carried the story, in a rare move publicizing information that reflects poorly on the country — especially given recent food safety scandals involving contaminated Chinese dairy products and eggs.

Four brands of Chinese eggs have been found to be contaminated with melamine this past week, and agriculture officials speculated that the cause was adulterated feed given to hens. No illnesses have been linked to melamine in eggs.

The discovery came just weeks after a crisis involving compromised dairy products that sickened tens of thousands of children and was linked to the deaths of four infants.

The scandal was blamed on dairy suppliers who added melamine, a chemical used to make plastics and fertilizer, to watered-down milk to dupe quality control tests and make the product appear rich in protein.

Melamine is high in nitrogen, and most protein tests test for nitrogen levels.

Health experts say ingesting a small amount of melamine poses no danger, but in larger doses, it can cause kidney stones and lead to kidney failure.

The deliberate addition of melamine to food and animal feed is forbidden in China. Its apparent prevalence highlights the inability of authorities to keep the food production process clean of toxins despite official vows to raise safety standards.

The Ministry of Agriculture and the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine did not respond to faxed requests for comment. Phones rang unanswered at the Ministry of Health.

Chemical plants used to pay companies to treat and dispose of melamine scrap, but about five years ago began selling it to manufacturers who repackaged it as “protein powder,” the Nanfang Daily reported, citing an unidentified chemical industry expert.

The inexpensive powder was first used to give the impression of higher protein levels in aquatic feed, then later in feed for livestock and poultry, the report said.

“The effect far more exceeds the milk powder scandal,” the newspaper said.

The account was backed up by a manager at a feed company based in central China’s Henan province, though he said the practice has been going on for even longer than reported — some seven or eight years.

The manager, who refused to give The Associated Press his name or other identifying details citing the sensitivity of the issue, blamed suppliers to the feed companies.

“It’s the suppliers who do it to raise the protein level, because we put in the contract a requirement for a certain level of protein,” he said. “It’s very common that feed for egg-laying hens contains melamine. The suppliers add it because their ingredients for the feed are sold at a low price.”

He added that his company’s contract with suppliers bans them from adding melamine to their products.




Associated Press researcher Xi Yue in Beijing contributed to this report.

China begins investigation of tainted eggs
By MarketWatch
Last update: 11:08 p.m. EDT Oct. 28, 2008
BEIJING (AFP) — Officials in northeastern China said Wednesday they were looking into reports that eggs from a local company were tainted with the chemical melamine, state media reported.
The government of Dalian, a major port city, said in a notice that contaminated eggs discovered in Hong Kong were produced by a local company on Sept. 6, the Xinhua news agency said.
Xinhua didn’t name the company. Earlier reports had mentioned the Hanwei Group, one of China’s top egg producers.



The discovery of the tainted eggs has led to mounting fears that melamine, which has been blamed for killing four babies and sickening 53,000, may have contaminated a larger share of China's food supply than previously thought.
So far melamine has been discovered only in dairy products or products containing dairy ingredients.


said Tuesday it had pulled Hanwei’s eggs from its shelves in China, emphasizing that it was a precautionary measure and that products from Hanwei inside the country hadn’t yet been found to be contaminated.
Hong Kong health authorities reported during the weekend that they had found melamine in eggs produced by the Hanwei Group.
-Contact: 201-938-5400 End of Story

When I first heard about this melamine crisis I was a little confused since I was pretty sure melamine was the thing they made melmac plates out of. I used to collect and sell those on eBay many years ago.

I looked into it further and and this article is a good one, though it has not been updated to reflect the current crisis.

What exactly is melamine?

To the great surprise of parents, kidney stones, once considered a disorder of middle age, are now showing up in children as young as 5 or 6.

While there are no reliable data on the number of cases, pediatric urologists and nephrologists across the country say they are seeing a steep rise in young patients. Some hospitals have opened pediatric kidney stone clinics.

“The older doctors would say in the ’70s and ’80s, they’d see a kid with a stone once every few months,” said Dr. Caleb P. Nelson, a urology instructor at Harvard Medical School who is co-director of the new kidney stone center at Children’s Hospital Boston. “Now we see kids once a week or less.”

Dr. John C. Pope IV, an associate professor of urologic surgery and pediatrics at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt in Nashville, said, “When we tell parents, most say they’ve never heard of a kid with a kidney stone and think something is terribly wrong with their child.”

In China recently, many children who drank milk tainted with melamine — a toxic chemical illegally added to watered-down milk to inflate the protein count — developed kidney stones.

The increase in the United States is attributed to a host of factors, including a food additive that is both legal and ubiquitous: salt.

Though most of the research on kidney stones comes from adult studies, experts believe it can be applied to children. Those studies have found that dietary factors are the leading cause of kidney stones, which are crystallizations of several substances in the urine. Stones form when these substances become too concentrated.

Forty to 65 percent of kidney stones are formed when oxalate, a byproduct of certain foods, binds to calcium in the urine. (Other common types include calcium phosphate stones and uric acid stones.) And the two biggest risk factors for this binding process are not drinking enough fluids and eating too much salt; both increase the amount of calcium and oxalate in the urine.

Excess salt has to be excreted through the kidneys, but salt binds to calcium on its way out, creating a greater concentration of calcium in the urine and the kidneys.

“What we’ve really seen is an increase in the salt load in children’s diet,” said Dr. Bruce L. Slaughenhoupt, co-director of pediatric urology and of the pediatric kidney stone clinic at the University of Wisconsin. He and other experts mentioned not just salty chips and French fries, but also processed foods like sandwich meats; canned soups; packaged meals; and even sports drinks like Gatorade, which are so popular among schoolchildren they are now sold in child-friendly juice boxes.

Children also tend not to drink enough water. “They don’t want to go to the bathroom at school; they don’t have time, so they drink less,” said Dr. Alicia Neu, medical director of pediatric nephrology and the pediatric stone clinic at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Baltimore. Instead, they are likely to drink only once they’re thirsty — but that may be too little, too late, especially for children who play sports or are just active.

“Drinking more water is the most important step in the prevention of kidney stones,” Dr. Neu said.

The incidence of kidney stones in adults has also been rising, especially in women, and experts say they see more adults in their 20s and 30s with stones; in the past, it was more common in adults in their 40s and 50s.

“It’s no longer a middle-aged disease,” Dr. Nelson said. “Most of us suspect what we’re seeing in children is the spillover of the overall increase in the whole population.”

The median age of children with stones is about 10.

Many experts say the rise in obesity is contributing to kidney stones in children as well as adults. But not all stone centers are seeing overweight children, and having a healthy weight does not preclude kidney stones. “Of the school-age and adolescent kids we’ve seen, most of them appear to be reasonably fit, active kids,” Dr. Nelson said. “We’re not seeing a parade of overweight Nintendo players.”

Dr. Slaughenhoupt has seen more overweight children at his clinic. “We haven’t compared our data yet,” he said, “but my sense is that children with stones are bigger, and some of them are morbidly obese.”

Dr. Pope, in Nashville, agreed. His hospital lies in the so-called stone belt, a swath of Southern states with a higher incidence of kidney stones, and he said doctors there saw two to three new pediatric cases a week.

“There’s no question in my mind that it is largely dietary and directly related to the childhood obesity epidemic,” he said.

Fifty to 60 percent of children with kidney stones have a family history of the disease. “If you have a family history, it’s important to recognize your kids are at risk at some point in their life,” Dr. Nelson said. “That means instilling lifelong habits of good hydration, balanced diet, and avoiding processed high-salt, high-fat foods.”

There is also evidence that sucrose, found in sodas, can also increase risk of stones, as can high-protein weight-loss diets, which are growing in popularity among teenagers.

A common misconception is that people with kidney stones should avoid calcium. In fact, dairy products have been shown to reduce the risk of stones, because the dietary calcium binds with oxalate before it is absorbed by the body, preventing it from getting into the kidneys.

Children with kidney stones can experience severe pain in their side or stomach when a stone is passing through the narrow ureter through which urine travels from the kidneys to the bladder. Younger children may have a more vague pain or stomachache, making the condition harder to diagnose. Children may feel sick to their stomach, and often there is blood in the urine.

One Saturday last February, 11-year-old Tessa Cesario of Frederick, Md., began having back pains. An aspiring ballerina who dances en pointe five nights a week, she was used to occasional aches and strains. But this one was so intense that her parents took her to the doctor.

The pediatrician ordered an X-ray, and when he phoned with the results, her parents were astonished.

“I was afraid he was calling to say she pulled something and wouldn’t be able to dance,” said her mother, Theresa Cesario. Instead, they were told that Tessa had a kidney stone.

“I thought older men get kidney stones, not kids,” Ms. Cesario said.

The treatment for kidney stones is similar in children and adults. Doctors try to let the stone pass, but if it is too large, if it blocks the flow of urine or if there is a sign of infection, it is removed through one of two types of minimally invasive surgery.

Shock-wave lithotripsy is a noninvasive procedure that uses high-energy sound waves to blast the stones into fragments that are then more easily passed. In ureteroscopy, an endoscope is inserted through the ureter to retrieve or obliterate the stone.

Tessa Cesario is taking a wait-and-see approach. Her stone is not budging, so her parents are putting off surgery until they can work it into her dance schedule. In the meantime, she has vastly reduced her salt intake by cutting back on sandwich meats, processed soups and chips.

And, her mother said, “she drinks a ton more water.”

UN urges Bangladesh vigilance over melamine

11 hours ago

DHAKA (AFP) — UN agencies Wednesday urged Bangladesh to act quickly to determine the extent of melamine contamination in milk products in the nation after criticism over its testing methods.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation, World Health Organisation and the UN Children’s Fund in Bangladesh said they were willing to offer the use of “internationally certified” laboratories to test for the industrial chemical.



The initial tests, carried out by Dhaka University's chemistry department, were contradicted by results from two other local labs, which found melamine in only one of the brands tested.


Toxic chemicals found in Chinese-made bean jam

Small quantities of toxic chemicals toluene and ethyl acetate have been found in more bean jam imported from China by a Shizuoka Prefecture food company, local governments said. The announcements come after traces of the chemicals were found in bean jam imported by the same company and sold in Nagoya.



The jam was imported by Maruwa Foods, based in Iwata, Shizuoka Prefecture.

Company recalls cookies over melamine concerns
BATTLE CREEK, Mich. (AP) — A company is recalling Koala’s March creme-filled cookies from U.S. shelves because they were made in China and may be contaminated with melamine.

Lotte USA Inc. says Friday that it initiated the recall on Sept. 29. The Michigan-based company says it’s not aware of any illnesses associated with the products.




Melamine is the industrial chemical blamed for killing four infants and sickening 54,000 children in China. It's used to make plastics and fertilizers.

Thursday, October 16, 2008
Another milk product tainted with melamine

ONE more China-made milk product was tested positive for melamine contamination.

The Bureau of Food and Drugs (BFAD) said LOTTE Strawberry Snack KOALA Biscuit contains the toxic substance.

This brings to four the total number of milk products that were found positive of melamine. The other three are Jollycow Slender High Calcium Low Fat Milk,
Greedfood Yili Fresh Milk,
and Mengniu Drink.

Please read about the effects of melamine on the body here.



The 34 other products tested for melamine last Wednesday by BFAD yielded negative results.

These are: Arla Instant White Milk Powder Milex 126, Baby Sucker Candy (Smart Plastic Mfg.),
Baina Watch Milk Candy, Bainapie Coolmilk Bean, Barbie Milk Candy,
Call and Text Candy (Smart Plastic Mfg.), Chang’s Chin Tai Chang Square Cookies,
Changtai Food Lollipop Candy, Chaozhou-Zhancui Original Butter Scoth Classic Candy,
Cow’s Head Skimmed Milk Powder (Spray dried process),
Dairy Cow Instant Whole Milk Powder, Dongguan Bairong Strawberry Biscuit,
Dongguan HSU-CHI Orange Sandwich Cookies, Duke’s Choco Crunch Bar,
Erko Marsmallows (Dairy Milk Flavour Filling),
Galaxy Sweetened Milk Powder,
and H&Y (Healthy & Young) Jollybee Eat & Drink Candy (Orange Flavor).

Also are: Jiayuan Shuang Le Tong Candy, Jollycow Sterilized Milk, Khong Guan Custard Cream Biscuit, Khong Guan Marie Biscuit, Lotte Nidoo Skimmed Milk Powder, MC Nation Confectionary Milky Beans Candy, Milk Land Milk Powder (Sweet Cream Buttermilk Powder), Orion “It’s Now” Custard Cream Cake, Palma Commercial Skimmed Milk Powder, Permen Ancka Rasa Buah Candy Granules, Red Bull Skimmed Milk Powder, Sam’s Super i Man Milk Candy, Strange Biscuit of Common Song/Guava Cookies, Sweetworld Almo Milk Powder Bottle, The New Zoland Company Omilk Bonbon Yogurt Milk Soft Drops (Original Taste), Tiwi Banana Split Chocolate, and Vitasoy Malted Soya Bean Milk.

The food agency has so far tested a total of 148 out of the initial 200 products that were earlier recalled in the Philippine market following the melamine scare.

The Department of Health (DOH) has also imposed a ban on all the China-made milk and milk products until the test is completed. (MSN/FP/Sunnex)

For more Philippine news, visit Sun.Star Iloilo.