5,800 Chinese babies hospitalized from tainted milk
Written by Writer on Thursday, October 16th, 2008
5,800 Chinese babies hospitalized from tainted milk
By HENRY SANDERSON, AP
Thursday, October 16, 2008
HOHHOT, China –– Nearly 6,000 Chinese babies remain hospitalized with kidney problems caused by contaminated milk powder, the Health Ministry said, while dairy executives tried Thursday to restore confidence in the discredited industry with pledges of higher standards.
Officials in the major dairy-producing region of Inner Mongolia said the country’s two largest dairies plan in the future to buy raw milk from larger-scale providers to allow better quality control. The companies now purchase from scores of small-scale farmers and milk collection stations that would be merged into larger operations in the future.
The move is the latest attempt to contain the fallout after baby formula contaminated with the industrial chemical melamine was blamed for the deaths of four infants and the sickening of about 54,000 other children in China.
The Health Ministry said Wednesday that 5,800 children were still hospitalized - six of them in serious condition.
Authorities have blamed dairy suppliers for the food safety scandal that began last month, saying they added melamine to watered-down milk to fool quality control tests and make the product appear rich in protein.
In an effort to restore public trust in local milk supplies, reporters were taken on a tour of dairy facilities in Inner Mongolia, home to China’s two largest dairy companies, Mengniu Dairy Group Co. and Yili Industrial Group Co., both of which were implicated in the scandal.
“Provide 100 percent safety to consumers,” read a slogan on a red banner in the spotless processing and packaging hall at Yili’s headquarters in Hohhot.
Employees showed reporters a new station for melamine testing where workers wearing lab coats and gloves used new testing equipment they said cost the company 100 million yuan (US$15 million) to import from the United States and Japan.
Melamine, a chemical used to make plastics and fertilizers, can cause kidney stones as the body tries to eliminate it and, in extreme cases, lead to life-threatening kidney failure. Infants are particularly susceptible.
“After this incident, we have increased melamine checks on all raw milk supplies (and) only that which passes the tests goes into the factory,” said Yili executive president Zhang Jianqiu. “All of Yili’s products on the markets for sale … meet the standards.”
Government officials said the blame did not lie with the companies, but lower down the chain with farmers and milk collection stations.
Ren Yaping, a vice governor of Inner Mongolia, said the government and the dairy industry are considering merging the milk collection stations and farmers into larger cooperatives as a way to improve quality.
“The most important thing at the next stage is to start from the raw milk and improve the inspections right through the production process,” Ren said.
Officials said quality checks have intensified in recent weeks, with Mengniu and Yili deploying 3,000 inspectors throughout the region, and the government more than 4,000.
Mengniu and Yili have seen their shares plummet since the scandal broke, and the leading business magazine Caijing reported that the two companies’ combined losses were expected to top 3.6 billion yuan (US$526 million) over the next four to five months.
The tainted milk scandal has sparked global concern about Chinese food products, with more than 30 countries restricting Chinese dairy products, and in some cases all imports of Chinese-made food.
In Hong Kong, the government said Wednesday another child had been found to have kidney stones after drinking Chinese-made tainted milk, bringing the number of children with kidney stones in the territory to eight.
China’s popular White Rabbit candy returned to store shelves in Shanghai on Wednesday, but company officials said overseas sales would resume only later, the Shanghai Daily newspaper reported. The milk-based candy was pulled from shelves in the U.S., Europe and Asia following tests found that it contained melamine.
A company official said they were no longer using milk from companies whose products tested positive for melamine.
