FDA Draws Fire Over Chemicals In Baby Formula

Customers look at milk in a supermarket in Beijing Monday Nov. 24, 2008. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration last week opened an office in Beijing, days after U.S. health officials detained foods from China made with milk and other dairy ingredients as a precaution to keep out foods contaminated with melamine. Dairy products tainted with the industrial chemical melamine have been blamed in the deaths of at least three babies in China, while tens of thousands of other children were sickened

Public health groups, consumer advocates and members of Congress blasted the Food and Drug Administration yesterday for failing to act after discovering trace amounts of the industrial chemical melamine in baby formula sold in the United States.

"This FDA, this Bush administration, instead of protecting the public health, is protecting industry," said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), who chairs the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the FDA budget. In an interview, DeLauro said she wants the agency to disclose its findings and to develop a plan to remove melamine from formula. "We're talking about babies, about the most vulnerable. This really makes me angry."

The FDA found melamine and cyanuric acid, a related chemical, in samples of baby formula made by major U.S. manufacturers. Melamine can cause kidney and bladder stones and, in worst cases, kidney failure and death. If melamine and cyanuric acid combine, they can form round yellow crystals that can also damage kidneys and destroy renal function.

Melamine was found in Good Start Supreme Infant Formula With Iron made by Nestle, and cyanuric acid was detected in Enfamil Lipil With Iron infant formula powder made by Mead Johnson. A spokesman for Nestle did not respond to repeated calls and e-mails for comment yesterday.

Gail Wood, a spokeswoman for Mead Johnson, said the company does not think that cyanuric acid poses a health threat to infants. "Cyanuric acid is approved by the FDA to sanitize processing equipment," she said. "The risks of not sanitizing equipment are far greater than ultra trace amounts of residual cyanuric acid found in the formula."

The FDA has been testing hundreds of food products for melamine in the aftermath of a scandal this year involving Chinese infant formula tainted with melamine. Chinese manufacturers deliberately added the chemical to watered-down formula to make it appear to contain higher levels of protein. More than 50,000 Asian infants were hospitalized, and at least four died.

The FDA collected 87 samples of infant formula made by American manufacturers, tested all but 10 of them and held a conference call Monday with manufacturers to alert them to the preliminary findings, FDA spokeswoman Judy Leon said. She said she did not know when the agency was planning to inform the public.

The test results were unearthed by the Associated Press, which had filed a request for records under the Freedom of Information Act.

Leon said that the amounts discovered are safe and that parents should continue to feed formula to their children. "We know that trace levels do not pose a risk whatsoever," she said.

That contradicts the agency's recent statements about melamine, including a position paper that was on its Web site yesterday that asserted there are no safe levels of melamine for infants. "FDA is currently unable to establish any level of melamine and melamine-related compounds in infant formula that does not raise public health concerns," the document said.

Agency scientists have maintained they could not set a safe level of melamine exposure for babies because they do not understand the effects of long-term exposure on a baby's developing kidneys. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that infant formula is a baby's sole source of food for many months. Premature infants absorb an especially large dose of the chemical, compared with full-term babies.

"Just one month ago, the FDA had been very clear about how they could not set a safe level of melamine in formula for babies," said Sonya Lunder, a senior analyst at the Environmental Working Group, an advocacy organization. "Now they're saying trace levels are no problem. What changed?"