Koalas safe to eat?

This melamine contamination has affected so many products (and of course its consumers) and finally China is waking up to face its incompetence and overly-slack (or absolute lack of) regulation.

No doubt there needs to be drastic action taken against such irresponsible people, let's not over-react without first finding out information that we would want to know. Everyone must have heard warnings to stay away from certain products because of the melamine scare, and even some of the clean products have definitely been on those warning lists.

But how bad is this contamination? Check out a report made by the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA). The AVA has noted traces of melamine in some of the products sold in Singapore, and even gave details of the extent of contamination. (Even one of my most favourite snacks when I was a kid was posted there.)

Let me just replicate some of the figures given, using my favourite snack as an example:

Product: Lotte Koala’s March Cocoa Chocolate Biscuit (21g/pack)
Tolerable levels for an adult of 60 kg weight (amount daily over a lifetime): 104 packs

"AVA would like to assure the public that the levels of melamine detected so far in the affected products are low and hence unlikely to result in any adverse health effect."

Althought the AVA has also demand that suppliers recall all contaminated products and warned consumers to not purchse these products, I'm not sure of the rationale behind such actions. I would probably be more worried about having to call NKF for help if I had eaten 104 packs of chocolate-filled biscuits in a day before worrying about melamine. I'll probably die of dehydration or chocolate-overdose even before the melamine can kill me. And note, it says 104 daily over a lifetime. Now, doesn't it just seem even more impossible to die from melamine contamination?

There might be one or two products with higher levels of contamination, but even then I don't recall anyone in Singapore or the region dying from eating a few Hello Pandas or Marching Koalas. The victims in this big contamination are mostly infants who drank contaminated milk. Think: You are probably 5-10 times heavier than an infant, and milk in your food probably constitute 10% to 20% of its overall contents. Enough said?

So okay, I shall get back to my Koalas. Yummy.

(Disclaimer: This post is not, in any way that may be perceived, intended to encourage the consumption of any (possibly) contaminated food. Please check for relevant information before deciding if you would want to purchase/consume any products that may have been contaminated. For more information, do look up the AVA website, or you may also look here for the report referred to in this blog post.