Food Fraud with Melamine and Global Implications: Was Africa Left Defenseless to the Chinese Melamine Scandal?

Acknowledgments .................................................................................................. 362 References .............................................................................................................. 362

Whenever food is traded, there is always the risk of fraud. To this end, food has likely been adulterated since it attained commodity status. However, a new type of fraud has appeared this millennium, a fraud that has specically targeted nutrient content. This fraud has in its wake introduced the concept of chemical food safety, which has become a signicant global issue and carries with it public health and international trade implications (Kuehn, 2009). The most recent example was the epidemic of melamine contamination of milk products in China that surfaced in the autumn of 2008. The Ministry of Health of the People’s Republic of China later conrmed that some 294,000 children had suffered from urinary tract stones, 51,900 infants were hospitalized, and 11 babies died as a result of melamine poisoning (Anonymous, 2008b).