The Washington Post reported that federal health officials have authorized the release of chickens for slaughter and sale that had consumed small amounts of contaminated bird feed. These chickens had dined on the same substance—melamine—that had sickened and killed dogs and cats across the nation in recent weeks. You can read the U.S. Department of Agriculture Fact Sheet: Melamine and Analogues Safety/Risk Assessment.
There is very low risk to humans from eating pork, chicken and eggs from animals fed animal feed supplemented with pet food scraps that contained melamine and related compounds, according to an assessment by federal scientists.
Here are some marketing slogans to help the poultry industry kick off their chicken sales:It still tastes like chicken.Now, with Melamine.Melamine? Make it mine.Of course, the bureaucratic solution is to run some formula to quantify the risk that the consumption of adulterated chicken meat poses to human health. But, the feds and the poultry industry are missing out on the big picture if they decide to release the chickens for human consumption because I for one will not be consuming any chicken for the foreseeable future until I’m fairly certain that these adulterated chickens have already passed through the system. These chickens are already tainted. If the poultry industry doesn’t dispose of them, then it will taint all chicken products on the shelf because I am 100% certain that supermarkets will not be affixing a melamine sticker to packages of adulterated chicken so that the general public can distinguish between safe chicken and low-risk chicken.