Whew! We haven’t been sprung yet. The 7pm BBC World news led with an extensive item on the baby formula scandal in China, but did not mention either Fonterra or New Zealand.
Looking at the BBC World website, the story also fails to mention us, though Nestle is cited by name, as is Sanlu, Fonterra’s associate company in China where baby formula contaminated by the chemical melamine was first identified.
Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao was shown visiting sick children in hospitals and promising parents measures would be taken to reform the dairy industry to ensure there is not a repeat.
More than 53,000 children have required treatment, the Chinese government says, and four have now died.
Fonterra has not come out of this disgraceful scandal very well, appearing to be trying to cover its back rather than giving a full account of what it knew and when. I blame this on the company’s use of a public relations firm, Baldwin Boyle, rather than having an in-house media relations team, like most companies its size, that should have been capable of urging a full, frank and fast response.
Worryingly for Fonterra, the BBC item had a clip of a World Health Organisation official saying it was clear that some people had knowledge of this issue for some time but had not told anyone.
Melamine is a chemical used to make plastics but has been added to milk to make it appear to contain more protein than it actually has, thereby getting a higher price for the suppliers. The main test for protein reduces milk to its base elements to find the nitrogen content, a measure of protein. Melamine is high in nitrogen.
My understanding of the effects of melamine is that it is most dangerous with acidic urine. It precipitates in the kidneys if urine is acidic, causing kidney problems including kidney stones.
This is how the earlier scandal of melamine in dog food sold to the US quickly came to light, as dogs have naturally acidic urine and suffered immediate kidney problems.
Human urine is naturally neutral but can be acidic and I suspect this is what has happened with the babies who have developed kidney stones, after the melamine has precipitated in their kidneys. Not all babies fed this muck will have suffered that problem as if their urine was neutral it should have passed straight through.
I was also interested in why so many Chinese babies were being fed formula. For goodness sake, what is wrong with breast milk? But it appears that many Chinese mothers have to return to work immediately after giving birth and have no workplace facilities for breast feeding, hence a huge market for the purveyors of formula, which is not even allowed to be advertised in developed countries such as NZ, for the very good reason that breast milk is far better for babies.
5 Comments
September 22, 2008 at 11:24 pm
Fonterra requires very high standards throughout its supply chain in NZ. It appears that it didn’t apply those same high standards in China.
This experience isn’t just of concern for Fonterra in China. Other NZ companies involved, or wanting to be, in other countries are also at risk if local standards aren’t up to ours – eg PGG Wrightson with its dairy investment in Uruguay.
September 23, 2008 at 8:07 am
My daughter in Moscow last week certainly saw, through various news items, the NZ/Fonterra connection.
She reckoned that it would have been of interest due to the huge use of reconstituted milk. Imported milk powder mixed with purified/bottled water seems to be a pretty standard staple item.
September 23, 2008 at 8:14 am
Fonterra does not have its own infant fourmula brand, starting its range at “follow-on” formula. They supply powders to other companies’ brands and have long debated whether they should get into infant formula – this will put them off I guess!
CNN have had extensive coverage of the issue and I saw an intervire last week with a very stressed looking Andrew Ferrier. Fonterra are learning what being a minority shareholder in China means. Dairy farmers have always wanted control (they tried for years to buy the RC church out of Soprole) and they will be clamouring for control of San Lu.
September 23, 2008 at 8:57 am
Fonterra skipped its way into the Chinese market, for one reason: money.
NZ promotes its worldwide “brand” as being clean, green, innovative, smart, creative and transparent.
How could our biggest company partner with one of the most monstrous, unscrupulous, least transparent, least accountable, filthiest economic forces in the world and expect to come off with its image intact?
Now that this tragic fiasco has Fonterra’s teats looking grubby around the world, the huge and hard-earned differences between NZ and China are – for all intents and purposes – being homogenised.
September 23, 2008 at 12:26 pm
“Whew! We haven’t been sprung yet.” – It is inevitable that with the reported statements by the P.M of NZ.and statements contained within publications such as http://chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-09/17/content_7034236.htm , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_baby_milk_scandal, http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1841535,00.html, Fontera’s image and that of NZ will be subject to the scrutiny of the world press picking it’s way through the entrails of this sorry incidence.
Indeed, why are so many Chinese babies being fed formula when mother’s breast milk has been proven best and contains many natural ingredients that facilitate the natural requirements of a newborn child. For example in the second half of the first year, the stored iron supply that a full-term baby has at birth begins to run out if that child has been fed early on food that doesn’t contain iron or fed cow’s milk (which causes intestinal loss of blood) Breast milk is a good source of iron, although containing a lot lower concentrations than other substitutes, the iron in human milk that is naturally required is more completely absorbed than the iron in the other alternatives. In fact studies have suggested that breastfed infants without supplements generally do not become anemic and that they receive adequate iron throughout nursing. The major reason for this is due to the protein called lactoferrin contained in human milk and a breastfed baby is able to digest the tiny amount of iron very efficiently while the bottle-fed baby loses almost all iron. Lactoferrin has another important role by binding iron in the intestine and keeping disease-producing bacteria from utilizing any surplus iron for their own metabolism. By overloading the baby’s formula with iron can be harmful because it may encourage the growth of dangerous bacteria. Babies fed cow’s milk can become aneimic for another reason in that their intestinal tracts can become damaged by the foreign proteins in cow’s milk and tiny amounts of blood may be lost every day eventually exhausting their iron supplies.
With the subtle processing within a new baby’s digestive system the introduction of melamine to baby formula and putting new life at risk is tantamount to poisoning new life.