China has arrested six more people for their role in supplying contaminated milk to the country’s dairy companies, while the health ministry said more than 3,600 Chinese children remain hospitalized after consuming compromised products.
The six suspects, who worked in the major dairy-producing region of Inner Mongolia, either sold melamine to milk suppliers or added the industrial chemical to milk themselves, Xinhua News Agency said on Thursday.
Melamine, used in plastics and fertilizer, can cause kidney stones and lead to kidney failure in larger doses. A total of 3,654 children remain sick, with three in serious condition, the Ministry of Health said in a notice on its Web site late on Wednesday.
PHOTO: AFP
Authorities say middlemen apparently added melamine to milk they collected from farmers to sell to large dairy companies. The suppliers are accused of watering down the milk and then adding the nitrogen-rich chemical to make the milk seem higher in protein when tested. Protein tests often simply measure nitrogen levels.
As of Wednesday, a total of 46,717 children had been treated and discharged from hospitals, the health ministry said. Milk powder contaminated with melamine has been blamed for the deaths of four infants.
There have not been any more reports of deaths, the ministry said, adding that all the deaths occurred between May and August, which was before the public knew milk products were tainted.
Xinhua said the government in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia’s capital, requested that police launch an investigation into the sources of milk for China’s largest dairy companies, Yili Industrial Group and Mengniu Dairy Group Co — both of which are headquartered in the region.
Three of the suspects, who operated milk collecting stations, put additives containing melamine bought from two other suspects into their milk so it could pass quality testing, Xinhua said. The report said the sixth suspect sold a range of man-made additives containing melamine.
The milk collection stations sold milk to Mengniu, it said.
Authorities had previously arrested 36 people in northern China’s Hebei Province, which is the home of Sanlu Group Co, the company at the center of the crisis.
SPEAKING OUT: After Siranudh Scott’s allegations surfaced, celebrities and public figures took to social media to share their own experiences of sexual misconduct and abuse A high-profile alleged sexual abuse case within a wealthy Thai beer brewing family has prompted a wave of painful accounts from survivors of unconnected abuse in the conservative nation. Siranudh Scott, a member of the billionaire Thai family that founded the ubiquitous Singha beer brand, posted an emotional video this month accusing his elder brother Sunit of repeatedly abusing him when he was a teenager. Sunit, who is in his 30s, later denied the allegations in a video posted online, but Singha parent Boonrawd dismissed him from his executive role with the company on Tuesday last week. “I felt I needed to speak
SEEKING ORDER: Rodrigo Paz said that ‘anyone who wants to destroy the nation will have to deal with this president and the full force of the constitution’ Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz on Wednesday said that the nation was at a “breaking point” after nearly a month of protests that have caused shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Paz, who took office six months ago amid the worst economic crisis there in four decades, is battling a groundswell of fury over his policies. The political capital, La Paz, has been besieged by low-income workers and members of the indigenous majority calling for his resignation. “The country needs order and is reaching breaking point,” the 58-year-old said at a public event in La Paz, renewing his appeal for dialogue. On Tuesday, the Bolivian
COMMUNITY CONFLICT: Concerns about disease spread from corpses has run up against friends and families’ desire to bury their dead as infection spreads in the area Angry residents of a town at the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) attacked and burned a tent that was part of a health center where people are being treated for the virus, the staff there said Saturday. It was the second such attack in the region in a week. No one was hurt in the attack, according to reports but as patients ran out to escape the fire, 18 people with suspected Ebola infections fled the facility and are unaccounted for, a hospital director said. Angry residents arrived at the clinic in the
Forecasters in Europe yesterday warned of exceptional heat as record temperatures driven by a “heat dome” push temperatures well above seasonal norms across the continent. The surge follows a record-breaking Monday, with France logging its hottest day in the month of May on record, its weather agency said, and the UK also posting unprecedented highs. A so-called “heat dome” of warm air from northern Africa trapped under a high-pressure system over western Europe is behind the high temperatures not usually seen until high summer. Restrictions on outdoor work were imposed in parts of Italy, beaches in southwest France filled earlier than usual and
RSS