(no subject)

[novapsyche]

U.S. Says Some Chicken Feed Tainted

The [Agriculture Department and the Food and Drug Administration] said they believed the likelihood of illness to people eating contaminated chicken was low because the contamination was most likely diluted. Without evidence of harm to humans, the agencies said they were not issuing recalls of any of the processed chicken products.

No. Rather, they know that once a human food recall starts, it would panic lots of people, and the economy, fragile as it is, would take a huge hit.

Nope. Better to say, "We don't know if people can be sickened, so we'll assume they won't."

Comments

[dionysus1999.livejournal.com]

Is this another chance for me to be smug about being vegetarian? ;)

[vrax.livejournal.com]

At least when it comes to chicken - yes.

Allow me to demonstrate; I am so glad that I don't eat chicken.

See? It's fun!

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

Not necessarily.

rialian linked to dogemperor, who stated:

At any rate, the FDA is sufficiently worried that contaminated gluten could have entered the food supply that they are doing "across the board" testing of all human food products containing wheat gluten and some stores (Safeway among them) are either holding products for testing or (WinCo among them) pulling products already even without the threat of a formal recall.

Persons concerned re implications for human health are advised that one of the higher-risk groups (if this stuff has entered the human food chain) are probably vegans; this article (which also notes a lot of the same grave misgivings I have on PETA in general) notes that wheat gluten is heavily used in meat-substitutes for the vegan market, particularly Seitan. (Interestingly, you folks unlucky enough to have celiac may be the safest of all of us!) Per the Wikipedia article on wheat gluten, particularly high-risk foods may be wheat-based breads (or any bread containing wheat gluten--again, read the ingredients) and vegetarian "meat substitutes" (including tofurkey--despite the name, the meat is largely seitan, *not* tofu); mock duck (sold in Asian groceries and stores selling goods for macrobiotic diets) is particularly risky in this regard, as it is almost entirely Chinese-sourced and almost entirely made of wheat gluten. Potato bread may be an alternative to wheat-based bread products so long as it does not contain wheat gluten as a solidifier. Gluten-free diets may be considered for folks who are very concerned about this.

[dionysus1999.livejournal.com]

The weird thing is, the melamine shouldn't be making animals sick, it's an inert ingredient, or so we were lead to believe. The whole story hasn't been told yet.

The article on the melamine in China did not indicate this substance was being put in human food. I think most vegan/vegetarian food sources are local, too, they don't import wheat gluten from China, to my knowledge. That would be a scandal all by itself.

[blackwinterbyrd.livejournal.com]

wouldn't the chickens have died first?
oh wait. ewwwwwww