And after the milk scare, you think China has enough problems with its export reputation?

Turns out that someone's been putting melamine into livestock feed, and it got fed to chickens, and now it turns out the eggs are contaminated. There's been a recall.

Why did it happen? There's a primitive chemical test for protein level which  looks for is fixed nitrogen, basically amine groups. Melamine is made of amine, and if you add it to something, like animal feed, or diluted milk, it fools that test into thinking there's a lot of protein, even though there isn't.

In this case it's likely that someone took some sort of feed grain that was supposed to be high in protein (i.e. probably soya-based) and diluted it with something else that's cheaper (e.g. rice) which doesn't have much protein, and then added some melamine to fool the tests.

There's a more sophisticated test that can be done that won't be fooled by melamine. It's also possible to directly test for melamine. Presumably the Chinese are now going to have to move to that kind of testing.

But how long before China's reputation recovers from this?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 12:23 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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