Melamine: China Cutting Corners or Vegan Conspiracy?

I can’t drink milk. I can’t eat ice cream. Bubble tea is forbidden and the White Rabbits tease me as I pass over them for fear that they might give me kidney stones. Those who follow the news will know that Chinese milk has been found to have dangerously high levels of melamine, an industrial chemical usually used to make fertilizer because of high nitrogen content. In order to increase profits Chinese dairy farmers have been watering down and adding melamine to their milk. Water means they have more milk to sell and the melamine fools the protein tests so it appears that the milk hasn’t been watered down. The scandal started with Sanlu baby milk, sparked by an irregular amount of babies were being admitted into hospitals with kidney stones, all of which had been fed Sanlu. Once the media picked up on the story and the government started to investigate, it was found that basically all Chinese milk was contaminated.

This affected more than just pure drinking milk though. Milk powder was also contaminated and so anything that contained milk or was made with milk was potentially harmful. Major brands scrambled to assure customers that they were safe; Oreo was quick to boast that their cookies didn’t have dairy in them anyways, and McDonalds claimed that their ice cream was also “untainted”. However aside from a few big brands whose foods probably contain chemicals worse than melamine, we have been advised to stay away from dairy products.

This is erring on the side of safety of course, only a few babies actually died from melamine and it was because they could not pass the kidney stone and lacked the linguistic skills to tell their parents that they had kidney stones. Plus, the babies had been drinking this contaminated milk daily so they were consuming a lot of melamine. But even if it doesn’t kill you, it’s probably better not to have the stuff in your body. So I have been keeping away from anything with milk. This hasn’t been too troublesome, it’s too cold for ice cream now and I find bubble tea disgusting anyways. Monday, however, opened a new chapter is this story; Mr. Bissel handed us a New York Times articles entitled “Tainted Eggs From China Discovered In Hong Kong”. Damn.

Chinese eggs contain melamine too. I’m not a big egg person. At home I’ll eat French toast, but that’s pretty much as far as I go with eggs. Since coming to China I have gotten more used to eggs, but I still don’t love them. One of my least favorite dishes is called 西红柿鸡蛋 – translating to “Tomato and Egg”. Sound gross? I think so too, but Beijinger’s love it. Right next to school, we have a little row of shops that sell everything from friend chicken to candied fruit on a stick. One of these shops makes jian bing (affectionately called “egg things” by the SYA students). A jian bing is essentially a cross between an omelet and a crepe. The chef has a big flat griddles like they use to make crepe. A ladle full of batter is poured on and it is spread into a thin pancake just like the French to with crepe. Then the chef takes a raw egg, breaks it over the pancake and spreads it around. At this point two spatulas are used to flip the entire thing over (an impressive move if you ever get to watch one being made, I’ll try to get a video and post it later). On the other side various sauces are spread on with a paint brush and little vegetables (leeks and other forms of onion) are scattered on top. A large white cracker like thing is placed in the middle and the whole package is folded and shoved into a bag. The entire process takes about a minute, and one jian bing costs 3 kuai (44 cents). They are delicious and a popular lunch item with both American and Chinese students.

Back to the poison eggs, the eggs that were contaminated came from Dalian, a city relatively close to Beijing. Which could mean that the eggs we are eating in our jian bing are contaminated. What’s worse, the article goes on to say that “in addition to being used to adulterate dairy supplies, melamine may have been intentionally added to animal feed in China, according to a report published on Sunday in South China Morning Post. Tainted chicken and possibly fish and hog feed could result in poisonous meet and seafood” Which bring me to my point. If this accusation is true, that animal feed has been contaminated with melamine, then we could potentially become de facto vegans. I have made a chart to illustrate my point.

	Vegans Eat	I Can Safely Eat
Milk	No	No
Egg	No	No
Chicken	No	No
Ice Cream	No	No
Jian Bing	No	No
Vegetables	Yes	Until someone says otherwise…

Coincidence? Probably, but it’s fun to speculate. I seriously hope that the egg and meat contamination is not as widespread as the milk was. In the event that it is, I guess I won’t have to eat any more 西红柿鸡蛋!

On a completely different note, if you are tired of my blog or want to read more about SYA China, a lot of my friends have blogs, check out the other blogs section to the right of the text. We will be traveling for the next two weeks so no more blog posts and email probably won't work.