China said yesterday its tainted milk scandal had been brought under control and recently tested liquid milk samples showed no traces of the toxic chemical melamine, as US and European consumer safety officials urged Beijing to better enforce product safety standards.
“There is no problem,” Xiang Yuzhang (項玉章), the national quality watchdog’s chief inspection official, told reporters in Beijing.
“It has been brought under control, more or less. There are no more problems in the market. As far as I know, there will be no more bad news,” Xiang said.
China’s quality control agency said on its Web site that 235 samples of carton milk and drinking yogurt produced since Sept. 14 and sold across the country had shown no signs of melamine.
But China could face an uphill struggle to convince its own people and those abroad that it has the situation in hand, as fears grow that compromised ingredients may have contaminated other Chinese-made products such as cookies and chocolate bars.
Australia issued fresh warnings yesterday for China and nearby nations in the wake of the scandal, advising its citizens overseas to avoid all Chinese-made milk products, unless companies have confirmed their goods are free from contamination.
Milk powder adulterated with melamine has sickened about 54,000 Chinese babies and is blamed for the deaths of four infants.
Speaking in Shanghai, where US and European officials were attending seminars on product safety, acting US Consumer Product Safety Commission Chairwoman Nancy Nord said China’s troubles with contaminated milk highlight the need for better enforcement of product safety standards in manufacturing.
“The melamine situation just underscores the message that we are trying to deliver, and that is you have to know what’s coming into your factory and what’s going out of your factory,” she said.
“One can always do more. We’ve seen reasonable progress in China, but there’s a long way to go,” she said.
Speaking at the UN in New York, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) said his government would use the crisis as a chance to overhaul safety controls.
China would “strengthen institutional development, and take seriously supervision and inspections in every link of production, truly ensuring the interests of consumers,” Xinhua news agency quoted Wen as saying.
“We want to make sure that our products and our food will not only meet the domestic and international standards, but also meet the specific requirements of the import countries,” he said.
Meanwhile, Sanlu will not recover from the damage it has suffered, its New Zealand partner said yesterday. Beijing has taken control of Sanlu, 43 percent owned by New Zealand’s Fonterra Cooperative, and shut down its operations, Fonterra chief executive Andrew Ferrier said at a briefing.
WAITING GAME: The US has so far only offered a ‘best rate tariff,’ which officials assume is about 15 percent, the same as Japan, a person familiar with the matter said Taiwan and the US have completed “technical consultations” regarding tariffs and a finalized rate is expected to be released soon, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) told a news conference yesterday, as a 90-day pause on US President Donald Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs is set to expire today. The two countries have reached a “certain degree of consensus” on issues such as tariffs, nontariff trade barriers, trade facilitation, supply chain resilience and economic security, Lee said. They also discussed opportunities for cooperation, investment and procurement, she said. A joint statement is still being negotiated and would be released once the US government has made
NEW GEAR: On top of the new Tien Kung IV air defense missiles, the military is expected to place orders for a new combat vehicle next year for delivery in 2028 Mass production of Tien Kung IV (Sky Bow IV) missiles is expected to start next year, with plans to order 122 pods, the Ministry of National Defense’s (MND) latest list of regulated military material showed. The document said that the armed forces would obtain 46 pods of the air defense missiles next year and 76 pods the year after that. The Tien Kung IV is designed to intercept cruise missiles and ballistic missiles to an altitude of 70km, compared with the 60km maximum altitude achieved by the Missile Segment Enhancement variant of PAC-3 systems. A defense source said yesterday that the number of
‘CRUDE’: The potential countermeasure is in response to South Africa renaming Taiwan’s representative offices and the insistence that it move out of Pretoria Taiwan is considering banning exports of semiconductors to South Africa after the latter unilaterally downgraded and changed the names of Taiwan’s two representative offices, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday. On Monday last week, the South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation unilaterally released a statement saying that, as of April 1, the Taipei Liaison Offices in Pretoria and Cape Town had been renamed the “Taipei Commercial Office in Johannesburg” and the “Taipei Commercial Office in Cape Town.” Citing UN General Assembly Resolution 2758, it said that South Africa “recognizes the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the sole
Taiwanese exports to the US are to be subject to a 20 percent tariff starting on Thursday next week, according to an executive order signed by US President Donald Trump yesterday. The 20 percent levy was the same as the tariffs imposed on Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh by Trump. It was higher than the tariffs imposed on Japan, South Korea and the EU (15 percent), as well as those on the Philippines (19 percent). A Taiwan official with knowledge of the matter said it is a "phased" tariff rate, and negotiations would continue. "Once negotiations conclude, Taiwan will obtain a better
RSS