China syndromeChina has a history of tainted milk

The recent problems with melamine-laced milk which killed and sickened Chinese babies and led to recalls around the world is but the latest problem with diary products in China. The Wall Street Journal’s Gordon Fairclough writes that the routine spiking of milk with illicit substances was an open secret in China’s dairy regions, according to the accounts of farmers and others with knowledge of the industry. Farmers in Hebei province, for example, said in interviews that “protein powder” of often-uncertain origin has been used for years as a cheap way to help the milk of undernourished cows fool dairy companies’ quality checks. When the big companies caught on, some additive makers switched to toxic melamine — which mimics protein in lab tests and can cause severe kidney damage — to evade detection.

Worries about the extent of contamination in China’s food supply became more urgent this past weekend. Fairclough writes that after melamine was discovered in eggs in Hong Kong and mainland China, Beijing called for a nationwide crackdown to stop the contamination of animal feed, which authorities believe is the source of the melamine in eggs. The Chinese Agriculture Ministry said it has found melamine in 2.4 percent of the feed it has checked since mid-September, and has destroyed or confiscated more than 3,600 tons. The ministry called on local officials to “resolutely crush the dark dens” making and selling melamine for feed, saying it had found 238 and was investigating 278 more.

Melamine in feed has not led to the same kind of high concentrations of the chemical in eggs that were found when it was directly poured into milk — thousands of parts per million in some cases. Still, the amounts found in eggs have been above the safety standard China and several other countries established of 2.5 parts per million.

The problem lies in the fact that China’s small-scale dairy farmers — and there many of them — are hard to police, and relatively few have the capital and know-how to adhere to good dairy-farming practices, says Qiao Fulong, a Beijing-based dairy consultant whose company, Beijing Farmunity Inc. offers technical advice to farmers. Adulteration has become “a common remedy,” he says. Fairclugh notes that what complicates the challenge for milk is the relative newness of dairy cows to China as demand has surged in recent years. Qiao says that because many farmers do not know how to feed and care for dairy cows properly, the milk they produce often fails to meet the dairy companies’ standards. Even farmers who do know what to feed the cows often choose cheaper feed options, Qiao says. Many feed the cows maize straw instead of corn stored in a silo, because it is cheaper — but less likely to lead to good milk production.