The Great Chinese Milk Scandal

Post by **Broomstick** » 2008-09-25 08:16pm

HOW are we going to "pressure" China to clean up its act? The people in charge there don't seem to give a fuck about dangerous products or poisonous food for their own, much less anyone else.

Given a choice between barring trade in poisonous food and dangerous goods and a world wide depression is sort of dilemma, isn't it? Which would you choose for you and your family - food that will make you sick and destroy your internal organs, or economic hard times? Is money enough when your child is on dialysis or dead from kidney failure?

Diomedes · Post by **Diomedes** » 2008-09-25 08:28pm

Broomstick wrote:HOW are we going to "pressure" China to clean up its act? The people in charge there don't seem to give a fuck about dangerous products or poisonous food for their own, much less anyone else.

Given a choice between barring trade in poisonous food and dangerous goods and a world wide depression is sort of dilemma, isn't it? Which would you choose for you and your family - food that will make you sick and destroy your internal organs, or economic hard times? Is money enough when your child is on dialysis or dead from kidney failure?

I've found it interesting to look at the debate over country of origin labelling here in NZ. The greens push for mandatory country of origin labelling, and I've seen a lot of right wingers criticise such a proposal as racist, since people would then be free to discriminate against entire countries when not all producers in those countries might be corrupt/use sweatshop labour/contain contaminants and harmful additives. Yet at the same time, a properly working market relies on consumers having accurate information, and country of origin labelling might provide relevent information for some consumers. And I think people should be free to discriminate by country if they dont trust that country's food safety standards due to such government corruption as demonstrated in this case. You'd also have some people who would want to boycott Chinese products for political reasons, eg Tibet, or human rights issues etc. Considering NZ's free trade deal with China, it's quite a concern for a lot of people, especially in light of disasters like this.

MarshalPurnell · Post by **MarshalPurnell** » 2008-09-25 08:30pm

I believe that's called a false dilemma. One can enforce safety standards without cutting off agricultural trade in general, and the vast majority of goods and foodstuffs imported into the country (even from China) are perfectly safe. The danger is that legitimate concerns will be used to force a wider breech in the structure of world trade, on issues having nothing to do with health and safety. Bad enough by itself and suicidal during a period of economic distress.

But let's take your dichotomy at face value. You've cut off foreign agricultural trade, which limits the supply of food, and you've driven the economy into the ground. How do you pay for the much increased cost of food then?

Post by **Broomstick** » 2008-09-25 08:53pm

In the US, food supply will not be an issue. Prices may rise, but there will be food for all here.

As you say - how to pay for food price increase? Well, also consider that, with rising fuel costs, the lesser charge for transporting only within the US as opposed to across oceans may offset this somewhat, and US agricultural production would probably rise within a year or year and a half (depending on what is restricted and what season it happens) would would help out US suppliers. Most agricultural commodities have sources other than just China, so safer import alternatives could almost certainly be found.

China is FAR from the only source of milk - if the world won't buy China's, then other dairy farmers in other places will benefit. Looks to me like a ban on Chinese dairy hurts Chinese dairy producers more than anyone else, and benefits the rest of us by reducing health risks.

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 2008-09-25 08:53pm

Practically every Western Country has a food surplus. Infact, many governments artifically keep the price of grains, milk etc high to prevent farmers from going under.

Ariphaos · Post by **Ariphaos** » 2008-09-25 11:06pm

I'm not sure how much more of this the world is willing to take. China could stand to lose jobs and its status as a net exporter, period, over this or the next scandal.

This is not something that a semi-communist country with strict controls on information, a half-built infrastructure and multiple looming ecological disasters is able to afford.

ray245 · Post by **ray245** » 2008-09-25 11:24pm

That is assuming the central government is ABLE to root out corruption at the local level first.

White Haven · Post by **White Haven** » 2008-09-26 12:26am

China seems dead set and determined, collectively, to live down to world expectations of their behavior, but this is pretty stunning. It's also more or less incomprehensible...how could you possibly think that mixing toxins in with your food shipments would go unnoticed? People dying from poisoning is murder often enough that most police agencies make some effort to find out what the poison WAS and where it came from, and at that point, all bets are off. I can understand corruption, but if the idea's to make extra money without getting caught, then I fail to see how poisoning people will do the job.

Adrian Laguna · Post by **Adrian Laguna** » 2008-09-26 01:07am

China right now is a bit like the Gilded Age in the United States, but with a considerably more modern technical base that allows for more sophisticated shenanigans. Back in the ol' days it was just rat faeces in the sausages and hamburgers.

Fingolfin_Noldor · Post by **Fingolfin_Noldor** » 2008-09-26 03:17am

Given that this is the umpteen time that this has happened, quite frankly it is ironic that for all the communism you have in China, you now have robber baron capitalism.

Shroom Man 777 · Post by **Shroom Man 777** » 2008-09-26 03:43am

Well, isn't communism just a system where the state itself is the "company"? When it cannot be regulated by the people, there really is no difference between a "government" and a "company", or a "kingdom" - like how there is no difference between a Premier, a Fuhrer, and a King whose right to rule is ordained by God or some shit. This is why democracy is awesome.

Fingolfin_Noldor · Post by **Fingolfin_Noldor** » 2008-09-26 04:04am

Shroom Man 777 wrote:Well, isn't communism just a system where the state itself is the "company"? When it cannot be regulated by the people, there really is no difference between a "government" and a "company", or a "kingdom" - like how there is no difference between a Premier, a Fuhrer, and a King whose right to rule is ordained by God or some shit. This is why democracy is awesome.

China has a communist government but allows private companies (and also the usual lot of bribes to lubricate the wheels of business). The trouble of course is regulation has been completely rendered nonexistent and ineffective because of rampant corruption. The system needs to be unscrewed and remade.

I foresee the firing squads will be busy though.

Darth Raptor · Post by **Darth Raptor** » 2008-09-26 07:28am

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:Given that this is the umpteen time that this has happened, quite frankly it is ironic that for all the communism you have in China, you now have robber baron capitalism.

The PRC is Communist, not communist. The CCP has a political monopoly, but like you said, it's a late 19th/early 20th Century USA-style madhouse.

Post by **Broomstick** » 2008-09-26 07:45am

White Haven wrote:China seems dead set and determined, collectively, to live down to world expectations of their behavior, but this is pretty stunning. It's also more or less incomprehensible...how could you possibly think that mixing toxins in with your food shipments would go unnoticed? People dying from poisoning is murder often enough that most police agencies make some effort to find out what the poison WAS and where it came from, and at that point, all bets are off. I can understand corruption, but if the idea's to make extra money without getting caught, then I fail to see how poisoning people will do the job.

It's all about greed and the short term - "I can make more money now, I'll worry about tomorrow later".

Keep in mind, too, that a small, very small, amount of these toxins won't cause obvious problems so they do get away with it for awhile, then get greedy and add more chemicals to stretch milk further, and again, until it starts killing people. No one woke up one morning and thought that poisoning tens of thousands of babies would be a good idea - part of the problem is that they didn't think about long term consequences, just more money.

Stuart · Post by **Stuart** » 2008-09-26 09:46am

Broomstick wrote: Keep in mind, too, that a small, very small, amount of these toxins won't cause obvious problems so they do get away with it for awhile, then get greedy and add more chemicals to stretch milk further, and again, until it starts killing people. No one woke up one morning and thought that poisoning tens of thousands of babies would be a good idea - part of the problem is that they didn't think about long term consequences, just more money.

I think that's spot-on. They assumed that they could get away with relatively low levels of contamination because by the time they filtered down to the consumer they'd be too dilute to be noticed. It seems to me that two things went wrong with that. One is that they didn't allow for cumulative effects so people who were consuminga lot of milk products (especially children) started getting hit by the ill-effects. The other is that each individual dairy conglomerate hit upon this scheme and thought they were the only ones who had. So each assumed that their contaminated milk would be lost in the sea of uncontaminated product released by other dairies. Of course, that fell apart because everybody made the same assumption and there was no sea of uncontaminated product.

By the way, Pacific Rim newspapers this morning are all reporting additional detections of Chinese-originated contamination and additional trade embargoes on Chinese products. Xinhua is reporting that numbers of "high ranking" government officials have been arrested but is downplaying this story as much as they can.

Post by **Broomstick** » 2008-09-26 05:46pm

Please enlighten this round-eye - what is "Xinhua"? (I'm trying to learn more about China, please be patient with me.)

Post by **Edi** » 2008-09-26 05:59pm

Broomstick wrote:Please enlighten this round-eye - what is "Xinhua"? (I'm trying to learn more about China, please be patient with me.)

The Chinese national news agency.

Adrian Laguna · Post by **Adrian Laguna** » 2008-09-26 06:00pm

Broomstick wrote:Please enlighten this round-eye - what is "Xinhua"? (I'm trying to learn more about China, please be patient with me.)

The official Press Agency of the Peopel's Republic of China. It comes in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish.

Post by **Broomstick** » 2008-09-26 06:09pm

Thank you. Now bookmarked under "news", could be interesting to watch in the future.

PainRack · Post by **PainRack** » 2008-09-26 10:06pm

White Haven wrote:China seems dead set and determined, collectively, to live down to world expectations of their behavior, but this is pretty stunning. It's also more or less incomprehensible...how could you possibly think that mixing toxins in with your food shipments would go unnoticed? People dying from poisoning is murder often enough that most police agencies make some effort to find out what the poison WAS and where it came from, and at that point, all bets are off. I can understand corruption, but if the idea's to make extra money without getting caught, then I fail to see how poisoning people will do the job.

Simple. One small firm does it, get profits, the milk is combined into the national and indeed, world supply, where nobody won't notice. Another firm does it. Then another....... until all 21 major diaries are doing it. Oops. Poison control now detects it.

And remember, this ISN"T the first case of melamine poisoning. We already had an example of this in pet food detected by the US FDA a year back. So................

Post by **Broomstick** » 2008-09-26 10:13pm

The pet food scandal might even be where some of these dairy guys got the idea.

PainRack · Post by **PainRack** » 2008-09-26 10:16pm

Interestingly, does Moff Yechin have any links about the current Taiwanese business coalition that's protesting for compensation for the losses they're suffering?

Stuart · Post by **Stuart** » 2008-09-26 11:05pm

Broomstick wrote:Thank you. Now bookmarked under "news", could be interesting to watch in the future.

Xinhua is a very good news agency, I've found them to be pretty reliable.

Latest hit is that at least five people in Taiwan are sick and Heinz Baby Cereal has been added to the list of contaminated products. This is getting grim.

ray245 · Post by **ray245** » 2008-09-26 11:07pm

Stuart wrote:
Broomstick wrote:Thank you. Now bookmarked under "news", could be interesting to watch in the future.
Xinhua is a very good news agency, I've found them to be pretty reliable.

Latest hit is that at least five people in Taiwan are sick and Heinz Baby Cereal has been added to the list of contaminated products. This is getting grim.

I hope that the relationship china enjoy with the current government can be maintained.

ray245 · Post by **ray245** » 2008-09-27 09:39am

The level of economic cooperation for instance, can be reduced. And bear in mind that one issue the current KMT government is banking on, is higher economic cooperation between Mainland china and Taiwan.

In essence, it is giving the Pan-green coalition ammo to attack the KMT. Then there is the fact that the Pan-Green coalition do not want to have closer ties with mainland.