Following the tragic infant deaths in China from contaminated milk and milk products the FDA has developed a method for detecting melamine and cyanuric acid. This includes the chromatography column SeQuant Zic-HILIC from Merck.

Minute quantities can be detected with precision and simultaneously separated using a variant of liquid chromatography combined with mass spectrometry. The quality of infant formula can, therefore, be extensively tested and has the advantage of ensuring other toxic triazine compounds such as cyanuric acid can be detected, which has the potential to intensify the negative effects of the contaminated food.

More about the FDA method for detecting melamine and other substances in infant formula can be found at http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~frf/lib4421.html