melamine,low risk-FDALow Risk of Illness From Food Containing MelamineThe risk to human health is very low from eating meat from hogs and chickens that have been fed animal feed supplemented with pet food scraps containing melamine and related compounds, according to a risk assessment conducted by federal scientists. This conclusion supports the decision announced on April 28, 2007, not to recall meat from animals that were fed contaminated product.
The risk assessment is an important new science-based component of the continuing federal joint investigation into imported vegetable protein products from China that contained melamine and related compounds. Melamine is an industrial chemical that has no approved use in human or animal food in the United States.
What information supports this conclusion?
In the most extreme scenario considered in the assessment, scientists assumed that all the solid food a person consumes in an entire day was contaminated with melamine at the levels observed in animals fed contaminated feed. In this scenario, the potential exposure to humans was about 2,500 times lower than the level considered safe. In other words, it was well below any level of public health concern.
The pet food scraps fed to hogs and chickens made up only a small percentage of the farm animal rations. In addition, melamine is known to be excreted in animal urine, and believed not to accumulate in the body of animals. When exposure levels are much higher, as was the case with cats and dogs, the melamine and its compounds appear to cause the formation of crystals in the kidney systems, resulting in kidney damage. There was no indication of kidney damage in hogs. Both hogs and chickens known to have been fed contaminated feed appear to be healthy.
