Fertilizer companies commonly add melamine to their products because it helps control the rate at which nitrogen seeps into soil. http://www.durgan.org/ShortURL/?GMYLF Our Home-Grown Melamine Problem For all the outrage about Chinese melamine, what American consumers and government agencies have studiously failed to scrutinize is how much melamine has pervaded our own food system. In casting stones, we’ve forgotten that our own house has more than its share of exposed glass.