The resurfacing of tainted milk products in China highlights the challenges of policing the food supply in a country where local authorities often look out for the welfare of companies, leading to lax regulation, experts said yesterday.
The problems have dealt another blow to China’s efforts to restore confidence in the dairy supply after a massive contaminated milk scandal in 2008 left at least six babies dead and sickened 300,000 other children.
The scandal, China’s worst food safety crisis in years, prompted the government to tighten regulations and vow to step up checks.
But at least five companies are believed to have resold milk products tainted with the industrial chemical melamine that were supposed to have been destroyed in the earlier sweep, the Health Ministry said this week as it launched a new 10-day crackdown on the dairy industry.
The ministry has not said if anyone was sickened by the latest contamination.
Three dairy plant managers and one milk powder dealer in central China suspected of selling melamine-tainted milk products were the first known arrests, announced yesterday, in the crackdown after contaminated products were recently found in several provinces.
The 2008 scandal exposed the widespread practice of adding melamine, normally used in making plastics and fertilizer, to watered-down milk to increase profits and fool inspectors testing for protein. When ingested in large amounts, melamine can cause kidney stones and kidney failure.
At the time, China promised sweeping changes and punished dozens of officials, dairy executives and farmers. In November, it executed a dairy farmer and a milk salesman.
But the penalties failed to deter others and local governments with close ties to companies often shield them from being punished, a food safety expert at Renmin University in Beijing said.
“When companies violate the law, the government raises its stick high, but lets it fall down softly,” said Zheng Fengtian, an agricultural economics and rural development professor. “The government coddles those companies too much and considers more the economic and employment impact that would occur if such companies suffer.”
Another food expert said local governments have tended to place the interests of their local dairies over strict enforcement, which has led to the new misdemeanors.
“Recently there are a lot of melamine problems happening because people thought the crackdown on melamine is over and the milk powder produced two years ago will soon be expired and there are people who want to take the risk” of selling it, Chen Yu, a professor at the Beijing Agro-Business Management University, told the Southern Weekend newspaper.
Concerns about tainted milk products peaked again early this year after authorities in Shanghai said they secretly investigated a dairy for nearly a year before announcing it had been producing tainted products.
The case was especially troubling because Shanghai Panda Dairy Co was one of the 22 dairies named by China’s product safety authority in the 2008 scandal, with its products having among the highest levels of melamine.
In other recent cases, officials in late January said tainted dairy products from three companies were pulled from more than a dozen convenience stores around Guizhou.
Officials said products recalled during the previous scandal somehow made it back to the market.
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