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Posted on 09/15/2008 5:52:55 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
More than 1,200 infants sick in China tainted milk scandal
BEIJING, Sept. 15 KYODO
More than 1,200 infants are now known to have been made sick after they were fed milk powder at the center of a food contamination scandal in China, the government said Monday.
Some 1,253 infants have developed kidney stones after drinking milk formula sold by the dairy firm Sanlu, which contained the chemical melamine, the Health Ministry said in a statement. Two of the infants from the northern province of Gansu have died.
The Health Ministry said 340 children are in hospital and 53 of the cases are serious, the statement added.
The official Xinhua News Agency announced earlier that two brothers who run a milk collecting firm have been formally arrested after they were accused of adding melamine to the milk they sold to Sanlu to make it look as if it was high in protein.
Nineteen people working at other milk collecting stations supplying Sanlu have also been detained by police, suspected of adding the chemical to their milk, the China Daily reported.
Li Changjiang, head of China's food safety watchdog, told the newspaper, ''It's unlikely that dairy farmers mixed the industrial chemical melamine in fresh milk. We believe the contamination is more likely to have occurred at milk collecting stations.''
The two brothers from Hebei Province, whose surname is Geng, are likely to be charged with selling toxic and hazardous food, Xinhua said.
Sanlu is part owned by the New Zealand dairy firm Fonterra, which says it was alerted to the kidney stone problem among babies several weeks ago and urged Sanlu to immediately recall its products, according to media reports in New Zealand.
New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said in an interview on national television Monday that her government was alerted to the problem last week and decided to tell ministers in Beijing because Fonterra's warnings to Sanlu had seemingly been ignored.
''I said to the officials, 'You must go through the ambassador to the Chinese ministries in Beijing and blow the whistle on this because we cannot have it on our conscience,''' she said.
Sanlu announced the recall of its baby milk powder last Thursday. The government said the affected product was mainly sold in China, with a small amount also exported to Taiwan. Taiwan authorities said Monday no illnesses have been reported there.
About 10,000 tons of milk powder are to be recalled and destroyed in China.
Analysts said the contamination scandal is acutely embarrassing to the Chinese authorities as they have been attempting to convince customers that Chinese-made food is safe after a series of scares last year.
These include the contamination of Chinese-made dumplings with pesticide, which sickened several people in Japan.
The government is now checking the safety of all baby milk powders on sale in China and the results are likely to be announced in the coming days.
It is also carrying out nationwide checks on the quality of milk and animal feed.
The New York Times carried out an investigation last year alleging that melamine is often added illegally to animal feed in China by traders and farmers.
The cheap chemical can distort the result of tests to falsely indicate that food products are high in protein, the Times report said.
A spate of pet deaths in the United States last year was blamed on melamine-contaminated wheat gluten and rice protein that were exported from China and which found their way into pet foods.
At least 13 babies died of malnutrition and other illnesses in Anhui Province in eastern China four years ago in another milk-powder scare after they drank a formula that was made without any added nutritional content.
==Kyodo
Ping!
This is rearing it ugly head here on Taiwan. Its been found and is being tracked. Seems it hit here back at the end of June so it has already made it to distributors and into some end-users.
There was a news story tonight with angry people throwing baked goods at a store-owner who was rumored to have used the powder in his pastries. Don’t really know if he did or not. The gov’t is doing what they can to track the stuff.
Ping
On its way to us as Cremora or Betty Crocker, ummm China, kidney stone and food poisoning goodness.
Don’t I remember Israel having a tainted baby milk scandal a few years ago?
It seems to me that an alternate protein assay method could be used which does not depend on the measurement of primary amines as an indicator of protein content. That would reduce the temptation to put poisons such as melamine into food powders. I believe the melamine can be tested for separately, as well, maybe using HPLC.
Anyway, so much for the technical comment. My heart goes out to those babies and their parents. May God comfort them.
Some exec is gonna catch a bullet to the back of the noggin.
Just sayin’.
Like pet food.
I’m not sure of the amount. I heard something on the radio and it seemed like it might be in that area. My Mando is lousy and my Taiwanese isn’t much better.
Melamine must be the new MSG.
IIRC, Melamine is what caused the dog food scare in the US when Chinese farmers tried to artificially increase the protien content of their grain products sold to the US and Canadian pet companies.
Now they are poisoning their own children.....
Lovely, the chinese people should tar and feather these company owners....then their government officials...
More like lead and gunpowder.
I believe the Chinese have executed company officials as corrective action in these kinds of cases.
NW AZ has the ProMed report on this here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2052529/posts?page=1917#1917
INFANT KIDNEY STONES - CHINA (02): GANSU, BABY MILK, MELAMINE
*************************************************************
A ProMED-mail post
Can anyone tell me why any Chinese food product is still out there on the market? I quite buying that stuff a year or more ago. I try to avoid anything Chinese when I can, but obviously their food can kill you.
Oh wow, I had only skim read that the first time. That milk is carried by WalMart.
FYI, look at the link I added from ProMed. WalMart carries this too.
What about all the hoopla the media made about mothers able to breast feed in public????.
They do. Mr. mm has had them and if they're bad enough, no amount of pain medication can do much for them.
Those poor babies. In China, no less, with their wonderful medical care.
Maybe now that it's hitting home they'll do something about it?
Thanks for the ping JACK.
China sure must have a lot of melamine, after killing all those dogs last year.
Words escape me. They don’t seem to really care who or what they poison, as long as they make lots of cash.
It is exactly the same as the petfood deal.
They put the same chemical in the baby formula to fool the protein sensors to indicate a higher protein content than it has.
This is the result of the devaluing of human life.
Coming steadily to a country you’re in. Thanks to Satanic Leftists.
The scary part is that when they did it to the pet food it caused a national outroar.
China has never placed a high value on human life.
That includes the asshats who import ChiComm foodstuffs into their countries. We need to isolate Communist China from the rest of the world!
“Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.”
Adams
The Bible, and therefore God, is VERY pro-private property, and therefore pro-capitalist.
But, in order to properly exercise these rights and freedoms, you are also required to have some internal constraints based on the same Word.
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