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Levels are low and parents should not change babies’ diets, an FDA director said.

California chemist Michael Filigenzi displays a vial of liquefied pet food that was tested for the industrial chemical melamine.

AP PHOTO

Traces of the industrial chemical melamine have been detected in samples of top-selling U.S. infant formula, but federal regulators insist the products are safe.
The Food and Drug Administration said last month it was unable to identify any melamine exposure level as safe for infants, but a top official said it would be a “dangerous overreaction” for parents to stop feeding infant formula to babies who depend on it.
“The levels that we are detecting are extremely low,” said Dr. Stephen Sundlof, director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. “They should not be changing the diet. If they’ve been feeding a particular product, they should continue to feed that product. That’s in the best interest of the baby.”
Consumers Union said Wednesday that the FDA advice is of small comfort to parents and caregivers. “It is very disturbing to us that no recall has been requested,” said Jean Halloran, the group’s director of Food Policy Initiatives. “The FDA originally said there was no safe level for these contaminants in infant formula. So this formula is contaminated.”
Halloran said she urged the FDA “to immediately make public all of the results of its tests for melamine contamination in food,” even those with levels below what would trigger agency action.
Melamine is the chemical found in Chinese infant formula — in far larger concentrations — that has been blamed for killing at least three babies and making at least 50,000 others ill.
Previously undisclosed tests, obtained by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act, show that the FDA has detected melamine in a sample of one popular formula and the presence of cyanuric acid, a chemical relative of melamine, in the formula of a second manufacturer.
Separately, a third major formula maker told AP that in-house tests had detected trace levels of melamine in its infant formula.
The three firms — Abbott Laboratories, Nestle and Mead Johnson — manufacture more than 90 percent of all infant formula produced in the United States.
The FDA and other experts said the melamine contamination in U.S.-made formula had occurred during the manufacturing process, rather than intentionally.
The U.S. government quietly began testing domestically produced infant formula in September, soon after problems with melamine-spiked formula surfaced in China.
Sundlof said there have been no reports of human illness in the United States from melamine, which can bind with other chemicals in urine, potentially causing damaging stones in the kidney or bladder and, in extreme cases, kidney failure.
Melamine is used in some U.S. plastic food packaging and can rub off onto what we eat; it’s also contained in a cleaning solution used on some food processing equipment and can leach into the products being prepared.