2008 CHINESE MILK SCANDAL
The 2008 Chinese milk scandal is a food safety incident in mainland People's Republic of China involving milk and infant formula, and possibly other food materials and components, which had been adulterated with melamine. With China's wide range of export food products, the scandal has affected countries on all continents. By the end of September, an estimated 94,000 victims have been claimed; four infants have died from kidney stones and other kidney damage. The chemical appeared to have been added to milk in order to cause it to appear to have a higher protein content. The same chemical was also involved in a series of pet food recalls in 2007. In a separate incident, watered-down milk resulted in 13 infant deaths from malnutrition in China in 2004.
The scandal broke on 16 July, after sixteen infants in Gansu Province who had been fed on milk powder produced by Shijiazhuang-based Sanlu Group were diagnosed with kidney stones. After the initial focus on Sanlu, the market leader in the budget segment, government inspections revealed the problem existed to a lesser degree in products from 21 other companies, including Mengniu, Yili, and Yashili. The issue has raised concerns about food safety and political corruption in China, and it has also damaged the reputation of China's food exports; at least 11 countries having stopped all imports of Chinese dairy products. A number of arrests occurred as a result of the scandal; the head of Sanlu, seven local government officials, as well as the Director of the Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) have been fired or forced to resign in response to the incident.
The World Health Organisation referred to the incident as one of the largest food safety events it has had to deal with in recent years. It says the crisis of confidence among Chinese consumers would be hard to overcome. A spokesman said that the scale of the problem proved that it was "clearly not an isolated accident, [but] a large-scale intentional activity to deceive consumers for simple, basic, short-term profits."
MELAMINE
Melamine is a hard synthetic substance better known for its flame retardant properties commonly employed in countertops, dry erase boards, etc. The nitrogen-rich molecule is sometimes illegally added to food products in order to increase their apparent protein content. It has also been employed as a non-protein nitrogen, appearing in soy meal, corn gluten meal and cottonseed meal used in cattle feed. Melamine is known to cause renal and urinary problems in humans and animals when it reacts with cyanuric acid inside the body, sometimes present in drinking water and in animal feed, so its use in food production is universally banned.
The Kjeldahl and Dumas methods used to test for protein levels fail to distinguish between nitrogen in melamine and naturally occurring in amino acids, allowing the protein levels to be falsified. Introduced into milk, it can help conceal its fraudulent dilution with water.Melamine adulteration of food products also made headlines when pet food was recalled in Europe and the U.S. in 2007.
HOW IT GOT INTO THE MILK
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said that melamine may be found "in a variety of milk and milk products at varying levels, from low ppb to ppm ranges."One academic suggests it may have been part of the food chain in China for a long time, as cyromazine (a melamine derivative) is a very commonly used pesticide in China. Cyromazine is absorbed into plants as melamine, and may therefore be present in the food chain, which includes poultry, eggs, fish, and dairy products.
It is not known where in the supply chain the melamine was added to the milk. The chemical is not water-soluble and must be mixed with formaldehyde or another chemical before it can be dissolved in milk.Caijing reported that "spiking fresh milk with additives such as melamine" was no longer a secret to Hebei dairy farmers for the past two years. Due to fierce competition for supplies, and the higher prices paid by Mengniu and Yili, Sanlu was forced into cost cutting measures. Its inspection system was compromised "as early as 2005 and allowed milk collection stations to adopt unscrupulous business practices", while government supervision was "practically nonexistent."
Caijing reported that 99% pure industrial grade melamine, costing ¥11,000 (US$1,600) per tonne, was too expensive to put into milk for the purposes of hiding protein insufficiency. The melamine in the tainted milk may have come from impure industrial melamine priced at ¥700 per tonne, and that Sanlu's baby formula melamine content was a result of tampering by adding low cost vegetable protein (such as low grade soya powder), and large amounts of scrap melamine as filler. The journal noted that low grade melamine would contain other more harmful material, such as urea, ammonia, potassium nitrate, and sodium nitrite. Among these, sodium nitrite is a known carcinogen.
