It started with pet foods. The announcement that wheat gluten, corn gluten, and rice protein imported from China is contaminated with the industrial chemical melamine made national headlines this Spring. Besides being a carcinogen, melamine causes kidney failure, and has no place in the food supply. Unfortunately, it seems that unscrupulous suppliers of these food products included melamine to boost the apparent protein content of their product, since protein assays look for nitrogen, and melamine is high in nitrogen. Once the melamine was found in the pet food, and there were dog and cat deaths from kidney failure that could be blamed on the contaminated feed, a recall of over 100 pet food brands was instituted.

Meanwhile, the FDA, which can only inspect 1-2% of the foods imported to the US, suggested that the issue may go beyond the pet food market and into the human food chain. The primary human food issue concerned pigs that were fed discarded pet food that was contaminated with melamine. It was also mentioned that the wheat gluten in question may also have entered the human food chain directly into products, but this possibility was not elaborated upon.

The result to date has been a call for more FDA funding and inspections of food imports. Of course, the real implications of the current food crisis are not being discussed. The truth is hard to swallow.

Realize that you cannot know if food is uncontaminated by just looking at it. It would be nice if the FDA was armed with a device like a "tricorder" à la Star Trek. All you have to do is turn on the gizmo and it will tell you if the food is fine or laced with some poison. Unfortunately, in the real world you have to know what to look for when you analyze a food for contamination. Every contaminant has its own test. If you are looking for something in particular, such as melamine, then you can do a melamine test. But that won't tell you about other chemicals in the food. You have to look for each one separately. With literally thousands of chemicals and chemical combinations in the world today, this would be a monumental, if not impossible task.

This means that if you didn't know what contaminant to suspect, then you would not know to look for it. Which brings us back to melamine. How did the FDA know to look for that chemical?

According to one news article, a shipment of wheat gluten from China had a sack among the gluten sacks with the label "melamine" on it. The US importer tested for melamine in the gluten with zero contamination found, but follow-up tests by the FDA did find melamine in the gluten.

Good for the FDA. But what if they weren't tipped off to look for melamine? Kidney disease is one of the most common causes of death in dogs and cats, and is high in human populations, as well. If it weren't for the accidental discovery of a melamine sack included among the gluten shipment, nobody would have suspected renal failure from melamine-contaminated food.

This also means that pet and human food may have been contaminated with melamine for a long time, maybe for months or even years.

Of course, the recall of pet food is supposed to reassure the public that something has been done, and the newly packaged food is now safe. However, a recall of contaminated human food containing melamine has not yet been done as of this writing, presumably to prevent a public panic and financial ruin for the companies using these ubiquitous food additives. This would not be the first time in history when public safety was subordinated to financial interests and the fear of creating a panic.

What seems especially troubling, however, is the lack of discussion about other possible contaminants in our food, and how they would be discovered. Without a tip off as with the melamine, a chemical can go unsuspected in the food supply for years. Public health officials will have to notice an increase in certain diseases, such as cancer or kidney failure, and conduct epidemiological studies to show that the increase is real. They would then have to try to guess what is causing it. Given the multitude of potential factors, guessing a food contaminant would be difficult. Which foods and which contaminants? Is it a new poison lacing the food, or is it some other FDA approved poisonous chemical (such as certain food colorings, flavorings, etc.) that is causing it? Given the fact that recalls are expensive and create lawsuits, it will take overwhelming evidence to implicate anything in food. If it wasn't for discovering the melamine sack, this crisis would still be unrecognized.

So here is the reality we must now face as the 21st century begins. Our food supply comes largely from other countries where food safety is worse than in our pre-FDA days. Just as the US does not allow certain pesticides to be used on US grown foods, but allows these to be exported to other countries whose crops are then imported to the US, we now have stringent food safety measures in the US, but allow imported food from places like China where food safety measures are virtually non-existent.

Then there is the issue that recent US foreign policy has alienated much of the world from the US. And, yet, we naively eat all the foods sent to us from these other nations. Food safety is really a national security issue.

Can the FDA get us out of this mess? Of course, not. They cannot inspect all of the food that comes into the US. And the foods they do inspect can only be inspected for known contaminants, as discussed above. What poisons should they look for? Where do they begin? The list of potential poisons is endless. So it seems clear that we can't rely on the FDA.

What can you do?

It's a good time to start growing your own food, or finding local sources of food that you can trust. The most likely candidates for contamination are processed foods containing a long list of added ingredients. Even expensive, mostly organic foods can contain imported additives that can be contaminated. The current melamine crisis involves wheat, corn, and rice, and there have also been implications of soy products, too. And keep in mind that more than melamine can poison the food. If you want to be sure your food will nourish and not poison you, then keep it simple. Whole grains organically grown, fresh fruits and vegetables locally grown by organic farmers, as well as local, organic milk, eggs, meat and cheese, would be the best. Keeping your food supply local is safer than buying from unknown suppliers. Avoid packaged, prepared foods.

Growing your own food is clearly the best. Those living in Hawaii have little reason for not growing at least some of their own food. Nothing tastes better, or is healthier, than home raised food. And when you think about how important food is to health, it is truly amazing that people trust other people with growing, processing, cooking, packaging, and delivering it to their local grocer or restaurant.

The key word here is trust. Do we trust the FDA to protect us from all food contamination? Do we trust other nations to send us healthy, clean, fresh food? Do we trust that if there is a problem that we will be promptly notified by government officials and the private industries involved? Can we trust what we read on labels, and assume that everything is fully disclosed on the label (which is currently not the case for genetically engineered and imported ingredients)? Can we trust the organic certifiers, and assume they are above reproach? (Who certifies the certifiers?)

Trust is the cement that holds our culture together. Unfortunately, we are living in a time of diminishing trust. When it comes to doubting the quality and safety of what we daily put in our mouths, trust has reached a low that demands personal responsibility.

In the end, you and your family are responsible for what you eat. Perhaps this will require people to become more educated about food choices, with the outcome of improved health.

Sydney Ross Singer and Soma Grismaijer are a husband-and-wife, medical anthropologist team internationally recognized for their research into the cultural causes of disease. They co-direct the Institute for the Study of Culturogenic Disease, located in Hawaii, with a Web site at: http://www.SelfStudyCenter.org They can be contacted via email at mailto:ssinger@coconut-wireless.net

HawaiiReporter.com reports the real news, and prints all editorials submitted, even if they do not represent the viewpoint of the editors, as long as they are written clearly. Send editorials to mailto:Malia@HawaiiReporter.com

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