Preventing the Adulteration of Food Protein

Fraudulent additions of melamine to the animal and human food supply in 2007 and 2008 were clear cases of intentional adulteration fueled by knowledge of chemistry and criminal intent (Xin and Stone, 2008; FDA, 2009). The addition of melamine took advantage of an analytical vulnerability of the widely used Kjeldahl and Dumas test procedures for measuring protein content in foods. Both procedures determine protein as the fraction of nitrogen measured times a nitrogen-to-protein conversion factor.…