I think this is total crap. They claim this "melamine syndicate" was actually producing melamine. Melamine is a very common industrial chemical, and it is made in huge factories.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/30/world/asia/30milk.html
Suspected Milk Adulteration Syndicate Arrested in China
SHANGHAI — China said Monday that it had detained 22 people for operating an underground network that intentionally contaminated milk with an industrial chemical called melamine. The contamination has led to the nation’s worst food safety crisis in decades.
The announcement, carried by the official Xinhua News Agency, was the third regarding a mass detention of suspects in the contamination, which has sickened more than 50,000 children, caused the deaths of least four from kidney stones, and led to recalls of products in China and abroad suspected of containing adulterated Chinese milk powder.
On Sept. 14, the government said 19 were detained, and on Sept. 19 it reported the detention of 12 more. The government did not explain in the Monday announcement how many suspects have been detained altogether in the investigation or whether some had been included in the earlier announcements.
It said police officers in north China, the nation’s biggest dairy producing area, had raided more than 40 dairy farms and milk stations in Hebei province and seized more than 220 kilograms of melamine, a chemical commonly used to make plastics and fertilizer. Melamine can also be used to illegally inflate the nutrition value of foods by fooling testers measuring protein levels.
The government accused the group of operating as a kind of criminal syndicate, producing melamine in underground factories and then marketing it to dairy farms and milking stations in Hebei province in order to adulterate the milk for profit.
The announcement was the government’s latest effort to calm fears after some of the nation’s biggest dairy producers were blamed for selling infant milk formula adulterated with melamine in order to save money.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao vowed to strengthen the country’s regulation and clean up the nation’s $18 billion dairy industry, which had been booming in recent years because of government-backed efforts to get children to consume more milk.
Over the past week, a growing number of global companies have been drawn into the scandal after tests showed that some of their foods had also been produced with melamine-tainted products originating in China.
On Monday, Cadbury PLC, one of the world’s biggest confectioners, said that tests had shown that some of the chocolate it sells in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Australia had tested positive for melamine. The company said all of those products were all produced in its Beijing facility, and the products affected, including dark chocolate and Cadbury Eclairs , were not exported to other countries.
“We have been monitoring the developing situation with regard to the contamination of dairy products with melamine in China with concern and the greatest sympathy for all those affected,” Cadbury, which is based in Britain, said in a press statement. “As a result, we believe it is appropriate to take a precautionary step to withdraw from the market, all of our Cadbury chocolate products that have been manufactured in Beijing.”
Most of China’s dairy exports are shipped to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Japan and other parts of Asia, though in an increasingly globalized world, some ingredients made from dairy goods could also easily end up in the United States and Europe, which has led regulators there to issue warnings.
In China, though, the milk scare has set off a minor panic. In Hebei province alone, where the scandal is centered because it is the headquarters of the Sanlu Group, the country’s biggest maker of infant milk formula, more than 200,000 children had been brought into hospitals to be checked for melamine contamination or kidney stone problems over the past few weeks.
Since announcing last week that about 53,000 children had been affected by melamine tainted dairy goods, the Chinese government has not updated the number of victims, nor has the government held a press conference in recent days detailed their findings.
But in recent days the government has tried to assure consumers that the country’s dairy supply is now safe, reporting that hundreds of tests conducted after Sept. 14 and involving some of the biggest dairy makers have not detected melamine.
Melamine is the same chemical blamed last year for sickening thousands of American pets. Regulators later discovered that the animals had consumed pet food ingredients that were intentionally spiked with melamine in China, apparently in an effort to save money by substituting real protein with melamine.
In Monday's announcement, the government said one suspect admitted to producing melamine as “protein powder” since last year, and another admitted to helping sell the powder to milking stations.
No comments:
Post a Comment