The Sanlu brand’s contaminated milk formula has caused four infants’ deaths in China and the number of infants diagnosed with kidney stones or other problems after consuming the Sanlu milk has hit 6200 mark, with 158 of them suffering acute kidney failure. (Last updated September 19, 2008)
Chinese authorities have arrested 19 people since the scandal was exposed last week. Two brothers who run a milk collection centre in Shijiazhuang, Hebei province, have admitted that they added melamine into the milk they supplied to Sanlu.
The brothers began mixing their milk with melamine in late 2007 to pass Sanlu’s quality test after their supplies were rejected a few times by the company and resulted in huge losses. Melamine is a chemical which is often used in plastic industry; reports suggested that it could make the milk appeared rich in protein.
Sanlu might escaped the blame for causing the contamination, but the public is questioning their slow response. New Zealand’s Fonterra Co-operative Group, which owns 43% of Sanlu Group, stated on Sunday that it has urged the Chinese company to recall since early August 2008.
Chinese news also reported that the first Sanlu related kidney stone case was discovered in early March 2008; while some reports quoted from a high rank government officer in Hebei province said that Sanlu knew about the use of melamine in its milk as early as 2005.
The scandal has rocked Chinese food safety concern yet again. In 2004, at least 13 babies died in Anhui province after drinking fake milk powder.
Update (Sept 17) – melamine found in more milk… 22 products from various dairy food firms are found contaminated by the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ).
Wow, just wow! When are the people who run companies in China gonna get a clue?! You just can’t go doing business like this. Cover-ups are becoming a thing of the past. You try to slip something like that by these days and eventually you’re gonna get caught.
Westerners just shake their heads at all this bad press about China. And it’s an embarrassment to Chinese people in the west who recently moved there.
Something Chinese people
Chinese are gonna have to learn. In this day and age, spiking food with chemicals, manufacturing fake goods, cheating, counterfeiting and all that other kind of stuff is unacceptable. Not only in a worls market but domestically as well. The days of coverups and being able to keep such happenings from being found out are gone.
Wow, so much bad press for China these days. And this on the heels of the olympics.
C’mon China, get a clue.
poor babies.
if the chinese mommies could breastfeed, they should just do that instead of buying the bad quality milk products in china.
bb… thing is, most Chinese mommies have to work these days, and those blue collars rarely enjoyed the maternity leaves like the west or those in big cities… they might need to start working two to three weeks after giving birth, and their work is often time demanding. In fact most of those that are hit by this scandal are from lesser income families because this brand is relatively cheap… but to be fair, their quality and reputation has been decent prior to this scandal.
Yes, it’s sad those babies are the innocent victims, of what is basically corporate greed to make an extra buck.
Businesses all over the world, not just in China, need to start putting quality before quanity. If the product doesn’t pass muster with inspectors and such then fix it with legitimate ingredients. Don’t put the piublic’s health at risk.
It’s just like the mortgage bankers in the US that have hurt economies all over the world because they wanted to make extra money by qualifying bad loans for people who couldn’t afford those loans. And the investment firms, Wallstreet and the Fed, all just covered it up untill it all came crashing down.
Now alot of people are struggling because of the greed of a few.
I guess it will always be human nature for people in power to cut corners and take advantage all in the name of making money. It’s frustrating.
The only benefit is, that once these things start happening then measures are eventually taken to try and prevent it from happening again. Such is life I suppose.
damn those bastards!
The number of children in China sickened by dairy products tainted with the banned chemical melamine has jumped to nearly 53,000, the government said Sunday.
More than 80 percent of the 12,892 children hospitalized in recent weeks were 2 years old or younger, the Health Ministry said in a statement posted on its Web site late Sunday. Four children have died and 104 of the hospitalized children are in serious condition.
Another 39,965 children received outpatient treatment at hospitals and were considered “basically recovered,” the ministry said.
The Health Ministry said that most of the hospitalized were sickened by powdered milk and baby formula. Most of the sick children consumed baby formula from one company, the Shijiazhuang Sanlu Group Co. The dairy is at the center of one of China’s worst food safety scandals in years.
“The hospitalized children basically consumed Sanlu brand infant milk powder. No cases have been found from ingesting liquid milk,” said the ministry statement.
Over the weekend, the Chinese territory of Hong Kong reported the first known illness outside mainland China — a 3-year-old girl who developed kidney stones after drinking Chinese dairy products. She was discharged from the hospital, the Hong Kong government said.
Singapore said Sunday that it had found traces of melamine in another Chinese-made dairy product, milk-based White Rabbit brand candy.
chinese deserve this….think how they treat animals..they snatch baby animals from thier mother just for meat & skin. these assholes deserve all type of scandals. I pray to god tht china shuld be destroyed as a whole as they dont respect any living thing in their country.