Tainted Chinese Milk Powder
I’d mentioned earlier that big dairies in Mexico were leary of buying from small producers whose quality standards they could not control.
The current crisis with tainted Chinese milk powder suggests that this is not an idle concern. This article from the Financial Times points the finger at just such small producers. Here’s the link. And from the International Herald Tribune, useful information on the structure of the milk powder industry in China. And links here and here to earlier postings of mine on the Chinese milk industry and its New Zealand connections.
Good post Rachel. Most of Indian Dairy is produced in cooperative model by small dairy farmers. I believe in India, when the farmer delivers the milk to the cooperative they have a machine that measures the quality of the milk. I find it hard to believe the high tech chinese wouldn’t be using such machines?
I suspect they do in China too. The basic milk analyzers measure protein, fat, lactose, non fat solids, density and added water. Reports in the general press are vague on the matter. My assumption is that the melamine that was added simulating protein masked added water. That’s just a guess. But it suggests that whoever was doing the adulterating it was someone savvy. And it must have been on a pretty big scale. I’m not sure how this fits with the small farmer hypothesis.