Pet Forum / Miscellaneous / Animal Health / April 2007

This is a pretty good hypothesis that I found interesting..

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/4/9/171352/6715

"Wheat gluten and melamine really don't go together.

For one thing, melamine is considerably more expensive than wheat
gluten. No unscrupulous exporter is going to cut wheat gluten with
melamine to increase his profits."

"I do have a theory.

There is one common thread between wheat gluten and melamine:

Water.

Wheat gluten production uses a lot of water. After the wheat kernel is
broken up in the dry mill, a water wash separates the insoluble wheat
gluten from the soluble wheat starch. Then the globs of wheat gluten
are screened off and go through a drying process. Any insolubles in
the water could be concentrated in the gluten.

The melamine production process happens to produce a lot of melamine-
laced effluent water.

Melamine has low solubility in water, biodegrades poorly, and tends to
hang around in the environment.

For the purposes of my theory, it is highly advantageous that upriver
of Binzhou is the Shandong Mingshui Great Chemical Group, whose urea
plant--one of China's ancient, 1958 vintage demonstration plants--
also produces melamine"