What went wrong with the Chinese dairy industry?
The Chinese milk industry is in disarray at the moment. Over a dozen milk companies have confessed to using Melamine in their milk to make it seem like it has more protein than it actually does. The reason behind doing this is because the milk farmers watered down the milk to give it more volume and this way they could produce enough milk to go around, however in doing this they decreased a lot of the nutritional value of the milk. So to compensate the farmers and dairy companies alike decided to put Melamine in the milk to make it appear to be much more nutritious than it really is. However their attempts at helping only ended in more disaster, as the results of Melamine made the people of China worse off than if there was no milk at all.
I completely agree in saying that this is a horrendous action taken by the Chinese government. I completely disagree with what they are doing, for many reasons, the first of which being that they are killing babies. Innocent babies are being killed and are ill because nobody wanted to lose any money. Well now they are paying for it because no one will buy any dairy products from China. The tainted milk has killed, at this point, four babies but has left thousands ill from the Melamine, which is the cause of this whole mess. BBC experts say that the problem is at the source, the cows. They are blaming the cows, which to a degree makes sense because if the farmers are poor to begin with they cannot properly feed and nourish the cows, which would cause them to use water to give the milk more volume as to accommodate the rapidly increasing market for milk. I disagree with this statement because I think that the manufacturers are to blame for not coming out and announcing this problem sooner. The cows and Farmers live in already horrible conditions and now it is even worse because they have no one to sell their milk to so they now have no income. This obviously makes the living conditions for the people and the cows much worse. I do however believe that they had legitimate reasons for trying to bulk up the milk, trying to feed the demand, but when they discovered that there was something wrong with the milk they should have just come out and said it. A BBC news reporter had this to say about the milk incident;
"This has certainly been an indictment of the food safety regime in China, but it's important to note that the culprit here is the city government - they are the ones who blocked the information coming out, and tried to avoid a public recall of the product," one of the industry insiders said.
I am not in total agreement with this statement either because how should the government have known what was going n if the milk industries were trying to cover everything up. However the part that I do agree with is that even after the government found out they didn't do anything about it. (all info for this paragraph was found at BBC.com)
The Chinese dairy crisis is not only a Chinese problem but it is in fact a world wide problem. Everyday new products are being discovered to contain tainted Chinese dairy. For example, in South Korea some crackers were tested positive for Melamine. In Britain the famous supermarket, Tedesco, has pulled all children's sweets from the store shelves in fears that they may contain Melamine. They have also pulled all other Chinese products from the shelves of the store. CNN.com has put the number of ill infants and children in China at around 53,000 people. Many of who are infants, this majority is due to the contaminated baby formula that they are consuming. Dozens of countries “from Asia to Africa” have either recalled or banned all Chinese dairy products. The Chinese government, in trying to make a good name for itself, has arrested eighteen people and has stated that they are the main sellers of the tainted milk, and they could be faces with death if they are convicted. In the United States inspectors have said that they will increase testing for Chinese products that may contain high amounts of milk or proteins from milk. This quote explains one of the many actions that South Korea has taken in the fight against the tainted dairy, and many other countries are doing the exact same thing.
In South Korea, the government banned the importation of all Chinese products containing milk after Chinese biscuits tainted with melamine were discovered in the country, a government spokesman said to CNN on Wednesday.
