on Sun, 08 Apr 2007 13:20:15 GMT, "sheelagh"

Sheelagh, a good source of information about the recall here in the US is
collected here:
http://www.petconnection.com/recall_basics.php

This site also links to a list of the brands and formulations of recalled
foods, in which wheat gluten containing melamine was used for
manufacturing.  I suspect the brand names are different in the UK.  
Avoiding anything with wheat gluten can't hurt.

Formaldehyde (a chemical...) was a wild guess on my part as a possible
source of poisoning, based on the orginal post in this thread that
suggested milk helped--a post that I now find questionable.

Formaldehyde is a chemical with one carbon atom, two hydrogen atoms
and one oxygen atom in the molecule.  It has a sharp smell and is
highly soluble in water.  It is used in the plastics industry and as a
preservative.  Formaldehyde is extremely common.  You find it in the
smoke from a wood fire, for example.

Melamine is a chemical with three carbon atoms, six nitrogen atoms and
six hydrogen atoms in the molecule.  It is used in the plastics
industry.  Melamine is mildly toxic.  I looked it up in my old copy of
Dangerous Properties of Industrial Chemicals, which said that the LD50
for rats was 3161 mg per kg by mouth.  "LD50" is the dose sufficient
to kill half of the experimental animals.  It took a smidgen more than
3 grams of melamine per kilogram of rat to do them in.

You do crude protein analysis of food by measuring the amount of
ammonia that is given off by the product when it is chemically treated
to release the nitrogen in the protein molecules.  Someone elsewhere
speculated that the wheat gluten supplier might have been tricking up
the analysis by adding melamine.  Otherwise the contamination could
have occured by carelessness:  using containers that once held
melamine to ship wheat gluten without giving the containers a good
cleaning.

Bud