Nearly 13,000 Chinese children hospitalized in China Milk Scare

Source: Yahoo News, AFP

BEIJING (AFP) - China said nearly 13,000 children were in hospital Sunday after drinking toxic milk powder in a dramatic escalation of Beijing's latest safety scandal.
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As the World Health Organization questioned Beijing's handling of the crisis, premier Wen Jiabao appeared on state television promising to head off further incidents.

But a Hong Kong toddler also became the first child affected outside the mainland and more countries moved to bar Chinese milk products.

The health ministry said 12,892 infants were in hospital with 104 babies in serious condition, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/chinafoodsafetychild

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I am glad that they are equal opportunity producers. They produce crap for themselves as well as the rest of the world......
Kinda sad, reminds me of Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle"..

If they lose 100K here or there from poison or pollution, they still have over a billion to work.

But there is little they can do. When is the last time you met a Chinese internet poster on a blog or webchat. The govt keeps a tight grip on activities there. Wouldn't want the natives getting restless.

for us. Lack of regulation over there

This is one of the main issues of the campaign

Deregulations of the S&L was a disaster. Deregulation of the airline industry was a disaster. Deregulation of the commodities and futures was a disaster, and repeal of the Glass Steagal Act was a disaster

I could go on

What the Chinese government will do is execute the head of the company that processed that milk. Of course it would have been so much better if they had food and safety regulations in place

I hope we are learning

I've worked with Chinese companies before. The people are quite aware that they are powerless against the government. That's why you haven't seen any giant demonstrations and why the Olympics weren't besieged by protesting peasants. The Chinese govt will execute "someone" but if it is actually the culpable party is anyone's guess.

the company was putting melamine in the milk to get around minimum standards for nutrition in dairy products (the melamine makes the milk look like it has more protein than it actually does.) So the companies were watering down the milk and then adding melamine to get around government regulations.

And for the posters upthread who think nobody cares, this is a big f*ckin deal in China right now. These parents are only allowed to have one baby. Many of the women are sterilized after they have their kid so they can't have another. That raises the stakes enormously when a child dies from an incident like this. And the government is scared shitless about the shockwaves from this... why do you think Hu Jintao spent the whole week kissing sick babies? They've already arrested 18 people and will probably execute most of them. How many meat industry execs in America even get a slap on the wrist when kids die of e-coli poisoning in the US?

I'm in China now and somehow, miraculously, I can read and post on this thread. If you haven't seen Chinese bloggers I would suggest you learn how to read Chinese and then check out some Chinese blogs. People are furious.

And as much as I hate being an apologist for the Chinese government here, this is very obviously the fault of the companies involved.

their own agendas to this thread thinking we will give them voice.

If anything, the one-child policy may make these children even MORE precious - if one can quantify such things.

The problem is that Chinese policy seems at the moment to combine the worst of communism (central dictatorship, lack of government accountability to the people) with the worst of capitalism (corruption in the interest of profits, insufficient enforcement of regulations on businesses). This has resulted in an appalling lack of quality control on products, especially with regard to safety.

This is a particularly awful tragedy. I hope that at least it may result in greater safety regulation so that there are fewer such disasters in the future.

guilty parties and execute them.

Is this all from powdered milk? Formula? How are they getting the contamination?

"The scandal stems from the practice of adding industrial chemical melamine, normally used to make plastics, to watered-down milk to boost apparent protein levels."

have been hospitalized due to this...here is the quote....

"Some 1,579 babies had been "cured" and discharged, the ministry said, adding that hospitals nationwide had seen almost 40,000."

Think about it........40,000 children ..........?????

And how many more to come, and how many milk products in the US are tainted?

I don't know how widespread it is in NESTLE but, Nestle also makes Purina as in dog chow, etc.

More pet food contamination to come?

Watch out!!!

:kick:

Hot chocolate mixes, for starters.

we bar any and all trade relation and travel to and from Cuba but give China the keys to our treasury :crazy:

China should have sanctions on it, just like Cuba!

Clean, cheap milk was not easily procured. Watering milk was an especially common way used to "expand" the beverage, resulting in a "weak and unutritious mixture of milk and water." But water was probably the most benign substance added to milk-often a mixture of soda, ammonia, salt, and water was used. Dye and chalk were also frequently used to whiten dirty milk.


http://www.tenement.org/Encyclopedia/diseases_marasmus.htm


Of course, now we have all those regulatory bodies hindering commerce, just because people want safe food and all....

took 75 to 100 years for various localities to regulate the milk supply. I think NYC still has the strictest standards.

NYC probably had a whole lot of dead babies.

malnourished, some were poisoned and others caught TB from the milk.

Very close to the same, but another point of view.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7628125.stm

Just ask the Chilean refugees in their embassy that they sent to Pinochet's death camps at Uncle Sam's behest. These problems are the consequence of rapid liberalization of certain sectors of the economy and the poor regulation of private enterprise in China under Deng Xiaoping (the bastard who signed a contract with Thatcher ensuring that full democracy would not come to Hong Kong) and Jiang Zemin.

how about the western colonial powers trying to occupy China, were they not rotten to the core?

ciritisizing leadership or government is one thing, but a whole race, especially after the west had exploited it for so long

The Nestle infant formula marketing campaign and boycott:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestl%C3%A9_boycott

I've been there and the people seemed pretty nice. And alot like people everywhere allowing for local differences in culture/customs.

Now if you were to clarify and say the Chinese government was rotten to the core, from the local to national level then I would definitely agree.

Whoa. I was not aware of that. Links?

Many people who drank milk in the Great Lakes region (primarily Michigan) during that time ingested PBB (poly-brominated biphenyl). It is a fire retardant that was accidentally mixed into dairy cow feed.

How exactly do you "accidentally" mix lethal non-food chemicals such as melamine or PBB into foodstuffs?

Every report I keep hearing point to intentionality.

Duke

I know they were rumored to dispose of female infants, but this is a wholesale version.

when we adopted our daughter from China, one of the things we were given in her care bag were a couple of packages of the Sanlu formula, one of the formulas now implicated in the melamine contamination. We were told that she was used to drinking it, so we boiled water, mixed up the formula and then let it cool. When it was ready, we put it in her bottle and I tried to feed her. She refused to drink it. I was at my wits' end because I was convinced that if she didn't drink formula she would get sick because of lack of calcium. But she would have no part of either the Sanlu formula or the two others that were in her care bag. The only things she would drink while we were in China were water or orange juice. At the time I was frantic with worry (chalk it up to being a new mother) that she wasn't getting calcium. Now I very thankful she turned her nose up at the Chinese formula. As I think about it now, I very much doubt the orphanage she was in or the foster parents she was boarded with, bothered feeding the kids formula after the earliest point they could get away with discontinuing its use.

BEIJING — The number of children in China sickened by dairy products tainted with the banned industrial chemical melamine has jumped to nearly 53,000, the government said Sunday as it vowed to crack down on those responsible for one of the country's worst food-safety scandals in years.

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 website 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 children were sickened by powdered milk and baby formula. It said most of the sick children consumed baby formula from one company, the Shijiazhuang Sanlu Group Co., which is at the center of the scandal that appears to be spreading to Hong Kong and Singapore

http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_10526474

Too bad they didn't pay sufficient attention when they poisoned our pets last year with this same crap!

Source: BBC News


Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7629130.stm

Source: AP

Article published Sunday, September 21, 2008

HONG KONG - The Hong Kong government says its tests have found melamine in Chinese-made Nestle brand milk.

The government said late Sunday it found the industrial chemical in Nestle's Dairy Farm brand pure milk for catering use. It said the milk was made by Nestle's division in the Chinese coastal city Qingdao.

But the statement said the tests only found a small amount of melamine and that the milk does not pose a serious health risk.

It recommended, however, the milk not be fed to young children.

More than 6,200 infants have become sick and four babies have died in China after being fed melamine-laced baby formula. One toddler has become sick in Hong Kong — the first victim reported outside the Chinese mainland.




Read more: http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080921/NEWS28/809210268

---

"the milk does not pose a serious health risk"...yet...."It recommended, however, the milk not be fed to young children."

:wtf:

plaaaaastic.

Well, at least the P.R. and advertising people will be picking up some quick cash.

I was so angry at them for that infant formula disaster in the 1980s.

when you pour it, it makes its own glass.

low?

"Save Money. Live Better." :puke:

Would I be generalizing if I said that China is the biggest manufacturer of toxic products ?

From now on I'll boycott any product with a "Made in China" label. :puke:

How many products from China that are harmful are we or any country going to allow in before we stop importing from them. Ohh wait that's right we will never ban them China owns us now.

I didn't even know Nestle had a factory in China.

does it have any function, like preservative or anything?
it seems really perverse...

With the milk, they water it down and then add melamine (suspended in formaldehyde, because it's not water soluble on it's own) so it'll test as having normal protein content, with the pet food mess the melamine was added to regular wheat flour so they could pass it off as much more expensive powdered wheat gluten.

Since the test for protein is really a test for nitrogen containing molecules (amino acids in protein all contain nitrogen), the high nitrogen content of melamine easily fools the protein level test. Like gold leaf on a piece of lead will fool a lot of people until they take the coin home and the gold rubs off. That's why people learned to bite on a gold coin to see if it was unusually soft, and why people will learn to look for the "Made in China" label to tell if their food has been poisoned.

At least China has a death penalty for people that think they can get away with harming the public.

I mean, how could they think they could get away with it?

But just in case she was right I stopped buying Nestle products. Lo and behold, as the years have passed, she was right. Thanks Amy. :loveya:

instead of Nestle? Paint with that broad brush.:eyes:

I'm just saying that Nestle has a responsibility to know what they're selling and to market a safe product, and that there's substantial evidence over a long period of time from all over the world that they don't take that responsibility seriously.

test batches (which were probably ONLY to pass the tests)assurances and then they have fraud perpetrated on them? DO you blame them or the people who scammed them?


I am sorry, but when most of the pet world (except Purina and Nestle) were killing our pets because they bought 'protein enhancers' from China, those two giants refused to jump on the bandwagon of cheap additives, and they BOTH have my trust because of that incident.


Bash all you want, but Nestle chocolate is STILL milk chocolate, and Hershey's is becoming junk.

Hell, I knew it, and I'm not in China, not in the food industry, and I don't even consume cows' milk. Certainly Nestle has the capacity to test for it- hell, all it would take to detect watered-down milk would be to drink a good swig of it- and chose not to.

Based on their prior behavior and disregard for the lives of children and infants, I see no reason to give nestle he benefit of the doubt.

And as far as chocolate goes, I choose to respect workers by buying fairly traded chocolate, rather than slave labor chocolate. The price difference isn't much, and there's usually a jump in quality as well.

:silly:

Sanlu Group is a Chinese dairy products company based in Shijiazhuang, the capital city of Hebei Province. The state-owned company is one of the oldest and most well-respected brands of infant formula in China. Sanlu is 43% owned by Fonterra. Fonterra Co-operative Group Ltd (NZX: FCGHA), generally known as Fonterra, is New Zealand's largest company by turnover. A cooperative, Fonterra is owned by approximately 11,000 farmers throughout the country. It is the sixth-largest dairy company in the world, and the most influential by far when it comes to determining international dairy trade, handling over a third of all international dairy trade.

In September 2008, it was involved in an adulterated milk powder scandal, affecting some 40,000 Chinese infants and killing four.<1> Melamine can cause kidney stones and other complications.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanlu_Group

So you still want to blame Nestle?

Sanlu Group sacks chairwoman following baby milk powder scandal

Tian Wenhua, the board chairwoman and general manager of China dairy giant Sanlu Group, was fired from her posts in the wake of the tainted baby formula milk powder scandal.

Tian was also removed from her post as the secretary of the corporation committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), according to Party authorities of Hebei Province and its capital Shijiazhuang where the company is based.

An estimated 1,253 infants, including two fatally, across the country developed kidney stones after drinking Sanlu's baby formula tainted by melamine, a chemical believed to help increase the the protein content in the milk.

Four people in connection with the contamination were arrested by Hebei police.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-09/16/content_10041638.htm

Is it still Nestle's fault?

Sanlu Group admits contamination of baby milk powder products

Sanlu Group, a leading Chinese dairy producer, said it had found in its self-check that some of its baby milk powder products were contaminated by tripolycyanamide.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-09/11/content_7020383.htm

You're posting an article about a different product's contamination. The Nestle contamination was detected in Hong Kong, the one you're posting is from mainland China. In both cases, the company selling the product is ultimately responsible for making sure they have a safe, wholesome product.

I know you have a xenophobic impulse that makes you want to lay the sole blame on China, but in this case there's plenty of blame to go around.

PS Nestle, BTW, is not an American company. Considering your stands on other threads, it seems odd for you to defend them, let alone buy their products.

YOU have a hard on for Nestle, I have a hard on for the Chinese, who have stripped this country of jobs. I think jobs are more important than who's chocolate you buy.

By marketing breastmilk substitutes (and condensed milk products as breastmilk substitutes in poorer areas) to healthy mothers in areas where water quality is poor or poverty prevents purchase of ample quantities of the substitute product, Nestle knowingly condemns over a million children a year to an entirely preventable death by malnutrition or intestinal diseases. These products are marketed deceptively (often untrained women are dressed as nurses to distribute samples to postpartum women) and illegally, and this practice has continued for two decades since international agreements on the marketing of infant foods took on the force of law.

And as far as the chocolate issue, if you care about jobs, you'll buy fair trade chocolate, because the other stuff comes from slave labor conditions, and often is produced via child slavery. I'm getting the impression that you only identify with and care about white first world workers.

the PROBLEM TODAY is the Chinese, period. MY cause is to get Barack Obama elected, then MAYBE he can take a look at all of the sub-plots in the universe and decide which ones take priority. :patriot:

You only care about western workers and consumers, and about blaming those evil people in the rest of the world for trying to make a buck. As soon as the argument moves beyond that scope, you're suddenly too busy. You'll post 100 posts to one thread criticizing people for buying a Honda made in Ohio instead of a Ford made in Michigan (or Mexico,) but dead children or children in slavery doesn't matter if the company killing them is a white, western one.

Globalization and the rise of giant corporations who are legally obligated to put profits before people hurts everybody, not just factory workers in the rust belt. Get your head out of your ass, drop your xenophobic bullshit and realize that the fight for safe food in China and the fight for a decent job in Flint is the same fight. Until you do, your narrow vision protects the very same multinational companies who are entirely eager to make a buck at the expense of your livelihood or even your life.

you bust my balls because I won't take up YOUR cause, bullshit, go bother someone else.

On edit

I don't ask anyone to take up my cause, but what gives you the right to impose YOUR views on me and decide MY cause isn't worthy?

You need help, or need to go work where you can't have access to political threads.

Killing off your consumers does not seem like a viable business plan. Seems like this would inevitably lead to the company's failure.

Edited for poor grammar.

NO company would kill off their customers. She is probably pissed because the supermarket would not let her return the banana Nestle's Quik she bought in exchange for the Hershey's syrup.:sarcasm:

>> Nearly 53,000 children in China are now known to have been made ill by milk powder contaminated with the industrial chemical melamine, officials say.
About 13,000 of the victims remain in hospital, the health ministry added. Four children have died.

Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has visited sick children in hospitals and apologised for the food scandal.

Most victims are under two years old, and at least 104 of those in hospital are in a serious condition.

The health ministry announced the new figures Monday. It said the sick children had consumed milk powder from the Sanlu Group, the company where the contamination was first revealed two weeks ago. <<

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7628622.stm