Official Chinese reports blame dairy farmers for China’s tainted milk powder scandal which has led to the deaths of four infants and the suffering of nearly 53,000 children.
The Beijing-based Ministry of Health revealed on September 11 that melamine was found in baby formulas produced by Sanlu Group Co., China’s largest producer of powdered milk.
China’s official investigators stated that dairy farmers added melamine, an industrial chemical used in plastics and fertilizers, to raw milk so as to make its protein content appear higher. This is according to an article from the state-owned Xinhua News Agency. An official report says the Sanlu Group, based in Hebei Province, discovered a problem in early August and reported to the authorities that some farmers had illegally added melamine to their own fresh milk.
On September 13, Associated Press (AP) reported on the Caijing website that the Sanlu manager Su Changsheng said, “We knew about the contamination but kept silent, hiding it from the public because some grocers refused to return tainted powder.”
In a New York Times article on September 24, government investigators are quoted as saying that the Sanlu Group neglected to act upon complaints from customers in June. This caused local authorities in Hebei many problems in early August, just before the Olympic Games opened in Beijing. However, a previous report, on September 17, by UPI Asia Online saw that the dairy farmers were blaming the milk collection stations, which have closer relations with the Sanlu Group than with the farmers. The milk collection stations build the infrastructure first, and then attract dairy farmers to bring their cows to the stations. The cows are often collectively raised and all the milk is pooled at the collection stations before dispatching it to companies like Sanlu.
The same report said that the majority of people think that the Sanlu Group is using dairy farmers as scapegoats for this fiasco. There are three arguments supporting the idea of scapegoating. First, dairy farmers provide milk to several companies. It is not possible for them to easily add melamine to only certain quantities of milk. To add melamine to the disputed 700 tons of milk powder that Sanlu recalled on Sep 11 would require many farmers from a wide area. If it was the case, how is it possible that milk powder produced after August 6, when Sanlu accussed farmers of illegally adding melamine, was fine? This suggests the possibility that the company deliberately added melamine in its own production lines.
The second argument has been appropriately stated by a blogger: “How did milk with melamine pass the quality inspection more than 1,100 times?” In a state-run TV broadcast “Made in China, Weekly Quality Report”, the Sanlu Group claimed 1,100 self-examined procedures for production of the milk.
The third argument is based on the properties of melamine. It is only mildly soluble in water. When it is added to milk it remains in a suspended form and does not dissolve. It is extremely difficult for farmers to add melamine to pure milk. Besides, powdered milk production requires the original milk to adhere to stringent requirements on levels of acidity, fat, milk solid, etc. The farmers would have to adjust other properties for the milk to meet the required indexes before being accepted by collection stations or dairy companies. Many people argue that such complex manipulations are beyond the capabilities of the farmers.
China’s dairy industry has been booming for more than a decade, with the aid of a forceful initiative to get Chinese people to drink more milk. However, as the Ministry of Agriculture stated on its web site, there are no national regulatory rules or agencies within China’s dairy supply chain—milk collection stations buy raw milk from dairy farmers then they sell it to the dairy producers.
A separate AP report said that it is not known at what point the chemical was added to the milk. Experts have doubts that many farmers would know how to add melamine to milk as the chemical must be mixed with formaldehyde or another chemical before it can be dissolved in milk.
Who should be held responsible is far from proven.
