Chinese Baby Formula Scandal Widens as 2nd Death Is Announced

[groovedaddy]

BEIJING — China’s Ministry of Health announced on Monday that a second baby had died in recent months and that 1,253 others had been sickened by contaminated milk powder in a widening food safety scandal that has exposed persistent weaknesses in the country’s regulatory system.

More than 340 infants remain hospitalized, including 53 in serious condition. Inspection teams are visiting dairy farms and processing centers in the country’s four main milk-producing provinces to ensure that producers are not violating safety standards.

The Chinese authorities have confirmed that the tainted baby formula was laced with melamine, a chemical additive sometimes used to make plastics and fertilizer. Last year, after thousands of pets became ill in the United States, the same chemical was found in pet food and traced to a Chinese ingredient.

The tainted milk powder has been traced to the Sanlu Group, one of China’s biggest dairy producers, which operates as a joint venture with a New Zealand-based dairy conglomerate, Fonterra. China does not export milk powder to the United States.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/16/world/asia/16milk.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

[Lifetimedem]

1. Thats ok

They can just send it here and our government will protect the company.

[groovedaddy]

2. I sometimes wonder if this stuff is some twisted attempt at population control.

After all that's gone down in the past few years, how can we be buying ANY products for human or animal consumption from China?

[BridgeTheGap]

3. I hear you. But they don't tell us when ingredients are made in China...they're making

it hard to avoid their shit!!!

[Lifetimedem]

5. Life is cheap there.

Visitors to the Olympics could not breath their air.. they do not regulate their meds or foods.. They do not care if they lose a few here and a few there.

What kills me is they own our national debt so the gov is afraid to say a word to them

Do you realize that most of our OTC vitamins come from there and those wonderful "fish oil" capsules come from their fish farms? Apparently life is getting cheap here too.

[groovedaddy]

4. Baby Formula Sickened Many More, China Says

BEIJING — China’s health minister on Wednesday reported a third death from contaminated baby formula and said more than 1,300 babies remained hospitalized, including 158 for acute kidney failure, in what has become a rapidly widening food safety scandal.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/17/world/asia/17milk.html?th&emc=th