Two of my grandsons were here today. They are just babies (16 months and month and half) but one of them is a little colicky. He looks like he is having cramps after downing his formula. But compared to some babies in China, it's nothing. The formula they've been drinking was adulterated with melamine, the same adulterant responsible for pet deaths from tainted dog food not long ago (see here, here, here). Dozens of poor babies have kidney stones. One has died. If you've never had kidney stones, this might not mean that much. But I've had them. Twice. The pain is excruciating. It's been likened to obstetrical labor. I was able to get to an emergency room fairly quickly because I knew what was happening. There I got morphine and when that wasn't enough, Dilaudid. These babies couldn't tell anyone what they were experiencing. They could just scream in agony. So what's the story?
Investigations showed that most of the babies had drunk formula produced by Sanlu Group, a Hebei province-based dairy producer partly owned by New Zealand dairy export giant Fonterra Co-operative Group Ltd.An official in Shijiazhuang, capital of Hebei and Sanlu Group's headquarters, said police had questioned 78 people in the case and laid the blame on unscrupulous suppliers.
"The suspects added water to the milk they sold to Sanlu to make more money. They also added melamine so that the diluted milk could still meet standards," Xinhua quoted Shijiazhuang Vice Mayor Zhao Xinchao as saying. (Reuters via Flex News Food)
It's not known if any of the tainted formula was exported. There is a ban on Chinese baby formula in the US but that doesn't mean it isn't here:
"We're concerned that there may be some infant formula that may have gotten into the United States illegally and may be on the ethnic market," said Janice Oliver, deputy director of the FDA's food safety program. "No infant formula from China should be entering the United States, but in the past we have found it on at least one occasion."(Fox News)
The New Zealand partners of Sanlu say they learned of the problem in early August and asked their Chinese counterparts to do a public recall. They didn't. The Chinese inspectorate also says they weren't notified in a timely manner. This sounds like a huge scandal and everyone is frantically trying to blame someone else. China is a huge market for infant formula and it has had other, most recently in 2004 when 13 babies died in Anhui province after being fed formula with no nutritional content. The current outbreak is reported to be in remote areas.
The current scandal won't do much for the already seriously damaged "Made in China" brand.
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Now the fun begins. . .
By GILLIAN WONG, Associated Press Writer
Mon Sep 15, 6:47 AM ET
BEIJING - Chinese police arrested two brothers suspected of adding a dangerous chemical to milk they sold to a company that produced infant formula that killed two babies and sickened more than 1,200 others, officials and state media reported Monday
Given how difficult it was for the FDA to find the source of the tomato salmonella outbreak, or the lone chile pepper responsible for it all (those evil jalepenos)... I find it difficult to trust any FDA assertions about whether or not the Chinese formula made it into the U.S. The original news release that I saw explicitly stated that the formula was not in the U.S. This new disclosure that it might be in the U.S. (in the ethnic market) is a development, but a very small one.
This results from the fundamental problem of trying to "inspect in" quality at the end. It doesnt work and it cant work. Quality has to be there from the beginning. Quality is the result of a process, not something that can be inspected in.
It takes rule of law to enforce standards. Rule of law is not something that the Chinese government is prepared to accept yet. They still want rule by those in power by fiat, not rule of law with no one above the law. Rule of law requires transparency, or those who are not required to be transparent can simply flout the law.
This is exactly what the US election is about too. On the one hand you have the GOP ready to do what ever it takes in violation of law; on the other hand you have the Democrats wanting to follow the rule of law.
It is the same with the quality of the rule of law. It cant be inspected in at the end by having the Supreme Court look at it. It has to be there every step of the way. The only way that happens is via transparency. If a justice system is not transparent, there is no way to verify if it is just or not. If it cant be verified to be just, then the legitimate default assumption is that it is not.
I'm glad you wrote this blog, revere.
Apparently, local Chinese officials ignored repeated requests to investigate. No action was taken until the New Zealand government contacted China's Central government. We can now expect the usual execution of the approved scapegoats at the local level while the Central government evades any responsibility.
A wild-eyed spokesman from Fonterra today said that there are many thousands of known food toxins. They cannot all be tested for. I agree. But the illegal introduction of malamine to food is not unknown. A "store recall" is not the same as a "customer notification" is it. And what part of this poor timing had to do with the Chinese Olympics? I hold back judgement on Fonterra for now. The West wants trade with China, but I fear we are still somewhat naive and will decide to remain so as long as we decide to buy cheap Chinese goods.
Dumb question: what is it about melamine that makes people add it to foodstuffs? What is it doing that gets milk past standards, makes pet food more attractive, etc?
Scott: Not a dumb question. It is easily obtainable, cheap and looks like protein content on the standard analyses. In this case they watered the milk and then added melamine to mask the fact that it was diluted. It allowed it to meet standards.
According to a media report, the melamine adulterations began in April 2005 (The vice-governor of the Hebei province, Yang Chongyong, said the practice of adding melamine to milk began in April 2005.). You have SanLu involved in another "fake" milk scandal in 2004.
As far back as 2005, we find in alibaba a warning (in Wikipedia): "In a news item on its website, Jiangyin Hetai Industrial Co., Ltd. warned its customers of low-priced "PSEUDO rice protein" for sale in the market by another unnamed supplier, noting that the contaminant could be detected by analyzing the isoelectric point.[64]"
Didn't the really sick pigs in China start in May 2007 (in the midst of the pet food recalls) and they wouldn't reveal enough for anyone to determine if it really was the blue ear virus?
Then there is the Thailand Sept 2007 meeting about the baby pigs ""Thousands of nursery pigs died in the months long incidence; whereas the affected survivors were poor doers... Results from the determination of the remaining imported portion of the only one suspected protein rich feed stuff sample from farm revealed the levels of melamine as high as 3,026 ppm, ammeline 958 ppm, and obviously, the amount of cyanuric acid was as high as 69,031 ppm. Thus, the term chronic cyanuric acid together with melamine intoxication could be applied in this case incidence. Possibly, as suspected, the scrap from the melamine production industry, collection of compositions, both the impurities and the rest of various raw materials, has been intentionally mixed before export. (feed sourced "mostly" from China)
In 2007 we had the pet food scandal with melamine. Shortly after we find that in 2004, there was another incident of melamine poisoning of canines in Taiwan/Asia.
Anyone who personally experienced the pet food scandal can relate to and feel deeply angered that now it's babies.
The whole argument during the pet food scandal was that people could be next, that they were canaries. The media kept say 16/18 and it was thousands. Nobody took the Off-the-chart pet owners seriously.
The FDA stopped counting at 1,950 Cats and at 2,200 Dogs and 18,000 phone calls.
Now, with pigs being genetically similar to humans we find this - a day late and many dollars short:
http://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/files/9MelamineGGCosta.pdf
1)Urine tests for metabolomic and proteomic early biomarkers of melamine + cyanuric acid-induced nephrotoxicity
2)A minature pig model to study for human risk assessments.
This reads like trying to find salmonella tomatoes, and represents the price of global trade without COOL, with quality fading industries, poor cGMPs and with government agencies & industries afraid to insult our largest trading partner, China.
But, it's ok if creatures & humans get killed. So NOT.
Reality trumps the guessing by the FDA, PFI and others
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/world/view/20080924-162537/Me…
"Citing other studies, Daniel Chan, nephrology professor at the University of Hong Kong, said: �Results from the investigations that followed the pet food incident in 2007 suggested the level of contamination in our food chain was low and thus unlikely to cause significant adverse effect in humans.�
Cap on melamine
Hong Kong placed a cap on melamine in food on Tuesday, restricting it to no more than 2.5 milligrams per kilogram. Melamine found in food for children under 3 and pregnant and lactating mothers should be no higher than 1 mg per kg"
Labs testing with the FDA SUL are now pretty obsolete when faced with reality, aren't they?
The urine test for early biomarkers indicates the FDA is working on them for human assessments. They need to get off their butts right NOW.
Guess we need to cap the salaries of the chair-sitters at the FDA the same as we do CEO salaries & make sure funds go where they are needed to bring our food safety system up to par with EU and the other parts of the world.
How much closer do we have to get to becoming a 3rd world society?