Melamine In Chinese Chicken Feed passes thru to Eggs, Products, Meat.

Congrats on caring on where your food comes from.

the next step is to demand quality, and or organic when it comes to your feed for birds. Somewhere within a reasonable drive of where you live there is a dealer who will sell you organic feed, and or an organisation of organic farmers.

The folks who sell you stuff will supply what you ask (fight) for. But do your homework. Walmart has become a big supplier of "organic" foods and most of it is from China (how it qualifies as organic, I have no idea).

Better yet, buy local: as a farm kid I know that many farms are organic but haven't been though the process to technically qualify. If you throw a banana peel on your land and the "organic" people find it you lose your organic status.

also be prepared to pay more for organic or local feed (not much more, maybe 20%)

buying from a farmer may mean buying in bulk (bring your own bags)

talk to a local organic bakery and find out where their flour (grain) comes from

good luck
 
We are so lucky here. Our feed is made from Canadian ingredients and the poultry feedmaster for the Atlantic Co-Op is near our place. It's another reason to buy local, this melemine scare already killed many pets in Canada, and children in China have been victimized. Of course it's no surprise to find their livestock are being contaminated and suffering during their short lives.
 
Thanks so much for posting this! That truly is scary, especially for those who are buying supermarket eggs. Who knows what those large poultry companies feed their chickens?

It is going to come to a point people, where we are going to have to go back to the basics completely. We are going to have to make and grow everything we consume to stay safe I'm afraid.
 
I'm not going to point fingers.. but this is one of the main reasons farms in the United states should stay in the United States. The USDA is here to keep an eye on them but when we import eggs we don't know a thing that has gone on with them.
 
this past summer I worked in a produce section of Safeway. 1st it was tomatoes,then cantelope and still is jalepenos. All with salmenella. As of the last time I went they still don't have jalepenos on the rack. All this produce was from Mexico. Something about the workers doing the deed in the fields.
 
LOTs of feed ingredients are sourced internationally, vitamins from China, Molasses from Africa, grain from many places, random other byproducts used in feed.
I was lucky enough to find a local farmer to sell me his custom feed mix regularly and since I don't want medication in my feed, that works for me.
Also, I learned that often bagged feeds are old, even 6 months old.
 
Some of us questioned where our feed sources come from but in now way that USA would import eggs from China or anywhere else. We all have a right to know what our chickens are consuming!
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Or our pets for that matter! I figured rice will be the next thing they are going to take a look at and the noodles as well.
 
We use Poulin Grain out of Vermont...BEST company ever!! One of the industry leaders in safe feed practices!!

http://www.poulingrain.com/

You are going to find that consumers who are pinching pennies in a tight economy are researching their products first. The consumers 'smarten' up so to speak and it's only a matter of time.
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BUY Local
BUY Handmade
Ask yourself...DO you really need this or is it a 'want'!

Stop going to those BIG Box Stores! They are tricking you into thinking that you are saving $$ by buying their product which is a few cents less than the grocery store....and if you add it up with your grocery store trip and THEN your BIG Box store trip...YOU still lost out. IF you must go to Wal-Mart...use the 10 minute rule!! Whatever you can get in your cart in 10 minutes is what you buy...BRING a timer!! You'd be surprised how well their marketing departments are!! Product is placed in a way to 'trick' you into purchasing something you do not need!! I MET Sam Walton when I was a child and he was opening a STORE in Downtown Houston TEXAS...Wal-Mart was started as a business and marketed as ALL Made in the USA!! Greed has changed it...and Sam Walton is rolling over in his grave! I think he was on to something...
 
Keep in mind that just as many food poisoning cases have occured as a result of poor hygiene right here in the good old USA: spinach, lettuce, beef, chicken... it's all happened here, too. And workers in American fields are just as likely to have poor health practices as workers in foreign countries. Just because it's American doesn't mean it's perfect or safe.

The melamine problem in China is definitely scary. Exported egg products are at risk - from what I've read, no whole eggs (in shell) have been exported. It's hard to know what's good & what's not these days.

Workers at restaurants who wear latex gloves and never wash their hands/gloves are one of my BIGGEST gross-outs. This is especially prevalent in fast food restaurants. Why it OK to take my money AND touch my food just because you have gloves on?

All that said, I've started buying more local produce this year & canned a lot of it. I do this not because I'm afraid of farming practices elsewhere - fear isn't a good enough reason in my book - but because in purchasing WA state foods, I help WA state farmers and prevent those farms from becoming housing developments. It reduces oil consumption and prevents my dollars from going to the Middle East. And when I grow my own food in my own small urban lot, I am contributing to local oxygen levels with the plantings and using arable land for something other than an utterly useless lawn.

<step off soapbox>

edited b/c I forgot the word "lot"
 
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There are some excellent books out there on the topic of our US food system. I highly recommend Michael Pollan's book The Omnivour's Dilema, Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (both have chickens in them!), and Joan Gussow's This Organic Life.
 

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