FDA Suspects Tainted Chicken

Organic may be okay because for a livestock animal to be certified organic it has to be have been fed on organic feed (all ingredients in feed certified organic and any pasture the animal feeds off of must also be considered organic) and as far as I know the tainted products were not certified organic.

My train of thought...
 
Well we know that some of the deceased (sorry to be crass) pets had measurable amounts of melamine (and whatever) in their kidneys at autopsy.  Last I read they were trying to determine how much melamine was in the meat of the hogs.  Nobody seemed to know if it would be in muscle tissue.  If its mainly caught by the organs it would seem to be a far lesser risk for humans who would likely not eat the organ meat.  If you assume a chicken or hog that is slaughtered for "supermarket" use (either as butchered meat or processed), an individual person would get a relatively small serving of one tainted animal.  People who bought those hogs to custom butcher (or whatever) would be at higher risk assuming one household would eat the whole thing.  What was killing the pets was a really high contamination level, and eating only that tainted food 2x a day every day.
 
However, I think another area of doubt is that the investigators (the rare ones who seem to have a brain) still dont seem totally sure what the problem is.  Melamine they can detect, but they dont believe should cause the problems/symptoms that are seen.  They've already traced some related/derivative substances (like the cyanuric acid).  I am still not totally confident that they know ALL the introduced compounds (or the derivatives that are coming from those compounds).  It may be "true" to say one pork chop full of melamine is totally harmless, but if melamine isnt the ONLY chemical in there, they cant really say its harmless.

In reality, the hogs will have higher concentrations if they are not suseptible to the toxin, because illness and death would stop food intake in the pets affected. So it is vital to know how and where these toxins built up, and their potential effects on humans. The higher up in the food chain, the more a toxin is concentrated, as we learned through our experience with DDT.

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He might have a point or two.

****According to an AP news release on April 20, the Chinese authorities had told the FDA that the wheat gluten was an industrial product not meant for pet food.****

This is the pivotal point. Was there any deliberate contamination by the Chinese, and if so, why? Melamine is more costly than gluten.

The FDA#%92s Dr. Sundlof stated at the onset of this debacle that melamine is used in the manufacture of plastics and may have been deliberately added as a cheap fake protein supplement to inflate the protein content. But gluten, be it of corn, wheat or rice origin, is used in the manufacture of new generation biodegradable plastic utensils, grocery bags etc. Melamine may be used in the process, (but carbon monoxide and cyanide-compounds are released when melamine is heated!).

FDA scientists informed the press on April 20 that they had identified three other contaminants in the urine and kidneys of animals sickened or killed after eating the recalled pet foods. These three chemicals were metabolized (breakdown) products of melamine, more toxic than the parent chemical, namely amilorine, amiloride, and cyanuric acid (a chemical used to chlorinate swimming pools). This kind of poisoning, by a metabolite or other contaminant, was suspect all along because melamine is not all that toxic at the dose-levels found in contaminated pet foods.

This leaves me with the terrible thought that the multinational pet food industry, following the economistic mandate of lowest-cost feed formulation based on simplistic nitrogen/protein and other ingredient assays in their ‘scientific#%92 formulation of ‘balanced#%92 diets for pets, thought they could get a good deal by incorporating industrial grade product gluten in pet foods. But what they actually purchased on the world market was never intended for human or animal consumption, but for the manufacture of biodegradable food containers, utensils and plastic shopping bags. This is essentially what went into pet foods, causing untold numbers to suffer, and many to die. May be industrial grade soy with melamine, imported from China, is also in some manufactured pet foods, and these will be on recall next.

The high morbidity and mortality rate in dogs and cats associated with this largest pet food recall ever could well have been aggravated by other chemical contaminants in pet foods that can harm the kidneys, liver, digestive, endocrine, immune and other systems of our animal companions. And the industrial crops of corn, wheat and rice, and possibly soy, grown in China for biodegradable plastic manufacture, could well have been genetically engineered, raising additional health and environmental concerns. But the details of this may never be fully unraveled.

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I'm Just looking for answers the same as everyone else.