Milking Trust
by Jennifer Altavilla

Fashionable housewives in the 1950s served home-cooked meals on it. Those same retro plates and tabletops are now sought-after collector's items. But, unfortunately for thousands of babies and young children China, melamine is not just used to make plastic dinnerware. Three hundred thousand children were sickened and at least six were killed by milk tainted with the chemical compound last year.

Although inherently non-toxic, melamine, when introduced to a food product like milk, can cause fatal kidney stones and renal failure. Milk farmers add the compound to milk in order to thicken it and make it nutrient-rich enough to pass government standards. Melamine, because it shows up as a protein in tests used to determine the nutritional value of a product, makes milk appear more nutritious than it really is.

Chinese milk farmers claim they have been adding melamine to their milk for years. Whether that claim is true or not, it seems Sanlu, the company that manufactured the tainted milk, had no plans of stopping the practice. It was only after Sanlu's partner Fonterra, the main dairy company in New Zealand, confronted it about possible contamination that the news about melamine was revealed. Reports of kids becoming sick of Sanlu milk circulated as early as December 2007, and by May 2008, Sanlu knew its milk was contaminated. However, it wasn’t until September 2008, when fourteen babies were reported ill, that the scam was made public.

It is only now, over a year after the first cases were reported, that the families of the victims are getting retribution. Tian Wenhua, the boss of Sanlu was sentenced to life imprisonment and had to pay a personal fine of 20 million yuan ($2.9 million). Cattle farmer Zhang Yujun, who ran an illegal workshop producing melamine, and milk trader Geng Jinping, who produced and sold melamine to dairy companies, were condemned to death. Sanlu was shut down and forced to pay a 50 million yuan ($7.3 million) fine.

Although the two masterminds behind the scheme face the death penalty, the parents of the affected children have yet to find solace. The fact is, killing two men will do little to improve the quality of the food in China. No government officials or health inspectors have yet to be charged. Although Sanlu's doors are closed, probably forever, government reports show that 22 other companies have been adding melamine to their milk. Nothing has been done to punish those companies because no one has gotten sick off their product, but who is to say that people will not in the future?

This is most likely not the last - and certainly not the first - time the Chinese food industry has come under fire. In April 2004 thirteen babies died of malnutrition from fake formula that contained only one-sixth of the recommended dose of protein. In 2007 China was caught exporting pet food ingredients laced with melamine.

As prolific as the health violations in the Chinese food industry are, it seems little can be done because the power structure in the industry is so unequal. The milk farmers, who sell their product to government unregulated middlemen, have no bargaining power. Since they have no power to raise the price of milk, they are forced to produce more of it. Thus, farmers milk their cows more often, and dilute that milk with water to increase output. That dilution lowers the protein content, however. Farmers then add melamine to the diluted milk to bulk up the nutrient content and pass health inspection.

Although milk farmers are forced to satiate the country's growing desire for milk-based products, they do not have the modern technology to either speed up the milk production process or make it more efficient. The dairy industry may be growing at 30% per year, but farmers have no means of meeting the industry’s demands.

Unless farmers are supplied with modern technology, or are given the right to bargain for themselves, sans the middleman, it doesn’t appear the quality of Chinese dairy products will improve. China may want to prove that it is an up-and-coming world power, but what kind of statement is it making if it’s food—which also gets exported to other nations, including the United States—is tainted? How can China expect other nations to respect and trust it, if its own people don't?

The way the Chinese government dealt with the Sanlu case further pollutes China's image. The families of the victims were detained from attending the sentencing of Sanlu's executives. Conveniently, the government didn't look into reports about the tainted milk until after the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. If its New Zealand stakeholder had not intervened perhaps the Chinese government would have done nothing at all. The lackadaisical attitude the Chinese government has taken toward the Sanlu scandal should frighten the rest of the world. If the government is willing to cover for a corrupt dairy company, who knows what else it has been hiding, and worse, what it will hide in the future.