Published: September 29, 2008
Source of Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/30/world/asia/30milk.html?em
The announcement,
carried by the official Xinhua News Agency, was the third regarding a mass
detention of suspects in the contamination, which has sickened more than 50,000
children, caused the deaths of at least four from kidney stones, and led to
recalls of products in China and abroad suspected of containing adulterated
Chinese milk powder.
On Sept. 14, the government said 19 people had
been detained, and on Sept. 19 it reported the detention of 12 more. The
government did not explain in the Monday announcement how many suspects in all
had been detained in the investigation, or whether some had been included in
the earlier announcements.
The announcement said police officers in northern
China, the nation’s biggest dairy production area, had raided more than 40
dairy farms and milk stations in Hebei Province and
seized more than 220 kilograms, or 485 pounds, of melamine, a chemical commonly
used to make plastics and fertilizer. Melamine can also be used to illegally
inflate the nutrition value of foods by fooling testers measuring protein
levels.
The government accused the group of operating as
a kind of criminal syndicate, producing melamine in underground factories and
then marketing it to dairy farms and milking stations in
The announcement was the government’s latest
effort to calm fears after some of the nation’s biggest dairy producers had
been blamed for selling infant milk formula adulterated with melamine to save
money.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao vowed to strengthen regulation and clean
up the nation’s $18 billion dairy industry, which had been booming in recent
years because of government-backed efforts to get children to consume more
milk.
Over the past week, a growing number of global
companies have been drawn into the scandal after tests showed that some of
their foods had also been produced with melamine-tainted milk products
originating in
On Monday, Cadbury PLC, one of the world’s biggest
confectioners, said that some of the chocolate it sells in
“We have been monitoring the developing situation
with regard to the contamination of dairy products with melamine in
Most of China’s dairy exports are shipped to Hong
Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Japan and other parts of Asia, though in an
increasingly globalized world, some goods made with Chinese dairy products
could also easily end up in the United States and Europe, which has led regulators
there to issue warnings.
In
Since announcing last week that about 53,000
children had been affected by melamine-tainted dairy goods, the Chinese
government has not updated the number of victims, nor has it held a news
conference in recent days detailing its findings.
But in recent days the government has tried to
assure consumers that the country’s dairy supply is safe, reporting that
hundreds of tests conducted after Sept. 14 and involving some of the biggest
dairy makers had not detected melamine.
Melamine is the same chemical blamed last year
for sickening thousands of pets in the
On Monday, the government said one suspect had
admitted producing melamine as “protein powder” since last year, and another
had admitted helping sell the powder to milking stations.
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