Milk Adulteration with Melamine - Screening, Testing and Real-Time Detection

Melamine – Screening, Testing and Real-Time Detection The adulteration of protein-based food products with melamine is now a well-known issue. Five years ago, the increasing number of renal failures in dogs and cats alerted the authorities to a problem in the pet food supply chain. We now know this was due to the mixture of melamine and cyanuric acid found inside pet food1. These chemicals were introduced into the pet food in China by food ingredient producers with the intent to exploit the long-standing system of payment for ingredients. Rather than payment by weight, which was often exploited throughout history, the food industry for the last 100 years has paid ingredient suppliers based on nutritional parameters such as protein or fat. Protein content is invariably quantified using either the Kjeldahl wet chemistry or Dumas combustion methods. These industrystandard tests for protein content measure nitrogen and correlate the result to protein. This means that adding high nitrogen content compounds to protein-containing foods generates a higher protein content reading and hence a higher price.