Melamine contamination has been making headlines for more than a year, the most recent involving tainted infant formula. In addition to adverse health effects, melamine has had a major economic effect as countries began banning the importation of milk and other food products from China. In an article appearing in the New England Journal of Medicine, Julie R. Ingelfinger, MD, examines the historical and current role melamine is taking in food contamination, and reveals that nobody knows the true extent of the present epidemic or the risks to come.