Baby Steps

      Yesterday, in the wake of the growing scandal concerning melamine adulteration of milk in the Chinese dairy industry,  the head of the Chinese government food and product safety agency resigned! Let's hope it doesn't end there.  The forced resignation of  Li Changjiang, the director of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine is merely the first move by the Chinese government to contain the damage to their dairy industry. But if they think that will end the outcrys from their own citizens or the world import markets, they are sorely mistaken. After all, the total of reported child illnesses has now reached 53,000 while there have been four infant deaths attributed to the tainted milk products. Add to that, the fact that it has just been revealed that the company at the heart of the crisis, the Sanlu Group began receiving complaints of child illnesses in December 2007, but did not run tests until June 2008, and that only after it was discovered that melamine was added to their product to create a false protein reading to ensure their products would not be rejected. They further compounded the problem by not reporting it until August. That's exactly what happened the year before in their pet food industry! Evidently nobody learned anything from that first incident. Of course, more heads will roll before this can be put to rest, and that's how it should be, but more importantly, the Chinese government must take immediate steps to raise the quality and frequency of their testing and inspection regimens.

   Unfortunately, as is usual in these kind of incidents whether they occur in China or elsewhere, the people who pay the price for the incompetence or criminality of the people responsible are the victims themselves, and in this case the small Chinese dairy farmers who may very well go out of business because someone further along the food manufacturing chain chose to contaminate their perfectly good product.