Serene > wrote:

>Steve Pope wrote:

>> Serene > wrote:

>>> We've been eating seitan our normal two-to-three times a week, and
>>> we're still alive. Hope that continues.

>> Hopefully you have a trusted source for it.

>Well, we bought it recently from the Berkeley Bowl, so I assume they
>feel confident selling it. Also, I read somewhere (I can go try to
>find a cite if anyone wants) that it's not fatal to humans, so I
>guess I'm just trusting our luck.

Melamine is not fatal to humans, but it's also not fatal to
dogs or cats, so there are clearly some pieces of the puzzle
still missing.

80% of the wheat gluten consumed in the U.S. is imported
(http://www.purina.com/WheatGluten.aspx)

Researchers suspect a mixture of melamine and cyanuric acid
(which can be produced by the action of some bacteria on
melamine[*]) produce the fatal crystals
(http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/05/01/rec...le/index.html).

Excerpt:

"What we've done is experiments that show if you take
cat urine and you add melamine to it and cyanuric
acid, the crystals will form in the cat urine in
a test tube as we're watching them, so it happens
within a matter of hours," said Alan Wildeman, vice
president of Canada's University of Guelph, which is
renowned for its veterinary research center.

The crystals are suspected of contributing to kidney failure in pets.

"I think we've identified what we feel is an important
and likely underlying positive agent of why the
animals are getting sick," Wildeman said.

Crystals blocked the tubes leading from the kidneys
to the bladder in one cat operated on recently at the
Bergh Memorial Animal Hospital inside the ASPCA's New
York headquarters, according to Dr. Louise Murray,
the group's director of medicine.

"The cat's kidneys were completely obstructed, and
when we went to surgery to relieve the obstruction,
there was no normal stone. Instead, the ureters were
completely full of these melamine-type crystals,"
she said.


Steve
[*] http://www.newscientist.com/article/...f-us-pets.html )