Backlash From Tainted Milk Scandal Spreads to Burma

By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, October 6, 2008; 9:23 AM



TOKYO, Oct. 6 -- Thanks to tainted milk, China's product-safety reputation is plumbing new depths. Even Burma -- where one of the world's most repressive and isolated military governments relies on trade with China -- has now warned its people to steer clear of all Chinese dairy products.

The generals who run Burma are sealed off from much of the world by economic sanctions, following a bloody military assault last year on Buddhist monks and democracy protesters. They increasingly depend on China for everything from military hardware to consumer goods.

Still, the Burmese government has publicized its destruction of 16 tons of Chinese baby food tainted with melamine, the industrial chemical that was mixed with milk products, leading in China to the deaths of four infants, the sickening more than 54,000 babies and a Chinese government crackdown on 22 dairy companies.

"Authorities concerned have urged the people not to consume milk and dairy products," the state-run New Light of Myanmar reported Sunday in Rangoon, the Burmese capital.



The anomaly of consumer protection in Burma points to the scale and severity of China's global public-relations disaster in the wake of what appears to have been a long-standing, industrial-scale scheme to adulterate infant formula and other milk products.

Dairy operators add melamine to milk products to increase its protein levels -- and their profits. The chemical often causes kidney stones when consumed by babies in infant formula.

A global backlash to the milk scandal continues to burp up melamine-tainted foods, from "Chocolate Pillows" sweets in Osaka, Japan, to a milkshake in Austria to White Rabbit Creamy Candies in West Hartford, Conn.

The scandal has touched some of the world's largest food companies, with Nestle, Cadbury, Mars and Kraft Foods recalling products or suspending sales. Imports of Chinese dairy products have been halted from Brunei to Burundi, Cambodia to Russia.

"China is overwhelming other countries with its ability to produce things at a cheaper price," said Yoko Tomiyama, head of the Consumers Union of Japan, where paranoia about Chinese food products is now ubiquitous. "As long as this globalized consumer system prevails, there will always be the next melamine."

Over the weekend, China announced the arrest of six more people suspected of producing and selling melamine. They were detained in northern China, where the country's milk industry in based.

Trying to contain damage from the scandal, China announced Sunday that no traces of melamine were found in a large test of milk products sold across the country. Chinese newspapers reported Monday that the tests were conducted in 27 cities on more than 600 batches of milk and that they found no melamine.

It was the second time in a week that the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine has said that tests have found no contamination.

The stock price of three of China's largest dairy companies rose Monday in trading in Hong Kong and Shanghai, after government tests cleared some of their products of contamination.

Complaints by parents about sick children first surfaced last December in Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei province. Doctors there also issued warnings.

But the scandal did not become public until Sept. 11, when a journalist posted an item on a Chinese social Web site about the sick children. It mentioned Sanlu Dairy Co., a 50-year-old firm that health officials say covered up the complaints of worried parents.

Hundreds of police have since conducted raids on pastures, breeding farms and milk-purchasing stations in the Shijiazhuang area.

The agriculture ministry said over the weekend that it was trying to help dairy farmers whose businesses have been ruined by collapsing demand for milk. In a statement posted on its Web site, the ministry said:

"On the one hand, we must crack down on illegal behavior, but on the other hand, we must protect the interests of the dairy sector."

Special correspondent Akiko Yamamoto contributed to this report.