Firm accuses local officials of delaying milk recall

While central government was quick to act, analysts say China needs to deal with corruption to stop continuing contamination threats.

Parents wait with their children, who will be tested for kidney stones at a hospital in Nanjing, Jiangsu province.

Beijing // China was struggling yesterday to come to terms with its latest food crisis as a fourth baby died from consuming contaminated baby milk. More than 6,200 babies have fallen ill and more than 1,000 - the majority of them infants - hospitalised, some 150 with acute kidney failure, after drinking milk products tainted with melamine, a potentially lethal chemical used in plastics. Local government officials apparently initially delayed reporting the contamination, despite receiving complaints about the milk powder back in March. Fonterra, a New Zealand dairy company, had informed its China partner, Sanlu, of reported contamination on Aug 2. According to Fonterra, Sanlu reported the problem to local officials, who declined to take immediate steps, possibly because of the approaching Olympic Games, which opened in Beijing on Aug 8. The New Zealand company had "been trying for weeks to get official recall and the local authorities in China would not do it", Helen Clark, New Zealand's prime minister, told TVNZ, a television network in New Zealand. "I think the first inclination was to try and put a towel over it and deal with it without an official recall." However, the contaminated milk was not limited to Sanlu, but affected dairy companies around China. A government investigation has discovered that some 22 companies had contaminated milk products, including the country's two largest dairy companies, Mengniu Dairy Co and Yili Industrial Group. Tainted dairy products were also found in neighbouring Hong Kong. Suppliers to the dairy companies are believed to have added melamine, a chemical banned in the production of foods, and normally used in plastics, to water down products and make them appear to have a higher level of protein than they actually did. This is the third time in two years that people or animals have been harmed by the addition of melamine to food products. China's central government took quick action after they were contacted by New Zealand officials, forcing the affected companies to pull products off the shelves. Some 19 people have been arrested in connection with the scandal. Tian Wenhua, general manager of Sanlu, was fired and was called in for police questioning. In addition, a number of local government and party officials in Shijiazhuang, where Sanlu is based, were also forced to step down. Yesterday, the mayor of Shijiazhuang resigned. Chen Zhu, the minister of health, said yesterday that the number of affected children was expected to rise as "more and more parents take kids to the hospital". The new scandal has heightened concerns about food safety in China, despite repeated promises by Chinese leaders to improve regulation. While the central government reacted quickly to the current scandal, ordering products be pulled off store shelves and firing local officials, it also tried to spin local reporting of the incident, announcing strict rules on what the media could report and limiting news outlets to stories released by the official Xinhua News Agency, the People's Daily and other key party-controlled media outlets. Analysts said China would not be able to stop such incidents from occurring until it dealt seriously with corruption. "The problem here is not just poor regulation or lack of changes in the political system," said Huang Yanzhong, director of the Center for Global Health Studies at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey. "China is not going to re-establish the reputation of its products, especially food products, unless it tackles its systematic lack of business ethics problem." Mr Huang said the Sanlu scandal was not isolated, but nationwide, involving baby formula manufacturers scattered in more than 10 provinces. "It is beyond the dairy industry," he said. "We've seen the proliferation of fake goods, including fake wine, fake medicine, pesticide-tainted rice and lead toys. China has failed to establish a code of business ethics at both the corporate and personal levels. Everybody is bent on trying to make money at any cost." In 2004, more than 200 Chinese suffered malnutrition and at least 12 died after being fed fake baby formula that contained no nutrients. Melamine was the centre of far-reaching pet food scandal in the United States last year, when an estimated 1,500 dogs and cats got seriously ill or died after eating pet food that contained the additive. Various observers have commented that it is difficult for the Chinese government to monitor the actions of a growing number of far-flung factories. What is worrying, they said, is the Communist leadership's long history of covering up sensitive news. It grossly underreported the actual number of HIV/Aids cases for years, and it prevented the media from reporting on the issue, allowing many more people to get infected. It also tried to hide the true extent of the outbreak of Sars, enabling the deadly respiratory disease to spread throughout China and beyond its borders. While the domestic media has carried some hard-hitting stories about these issues, its work has been despite the government rather than thanks to it. In many cases, journalists and whistle-blowers have been punished or arrested for writing about such issues while the guilty producers go free. This year, China's propaganda department again ordered local journalists to refrain from reporting on product safety issues in the run up to the 2008 Olympics. [e-mail]