China moves to regulate melamine use
Updated
China's health authorities say more than ten-thousand children are still in hospital after drinking toxic milk and milk formula. It's nearly two months since a New Zealand dairy firm raised the alarm -- forcing Beijing to go international with the news that more than 20 Chinese dairy firms had added the industrial chemical melamine to their products. Now, Beijing has set limits on melamine content.
Presenter:David Wang
Speaker: Dr Hans Troedsson, from the World Health Organisation;
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WANG: The latest reports from Chinese state media say the Chinese Cabinet - the State Council - has approved in principle a new draft regulation to raise standards and improve supervision of domestic dairy products. The decision is the strongest official action taken so far, and came as an army of five-thousand inspectors was sent to dairy farms in the main milk-producing province of Inner Mongolia in northern China.
One of the inspectors is Li Jun Peng, who had this to say at Zhanjun Milk Farm in the city of Hohhot:
LI: This is very important and we have to monitor the whole process of milking, including checking the feeds for cows, inspecting the milking process and monitoring the milk being sent to the cold tank, so the quality of the milk can be guaranteed.
WANG: But the exact number of children affected by baby-formula contaminated with melamine remains unknown.
Dr Hans Troedsson from the World Health Organisation, says he's still waiting on updated figures of the number of children affected by the toxic milk. But overall, he says he's satisfied with Beijing's efforts to tackle the scandal:
TROEDSSON: I would assume that they would share with us. I don't know why they decided not to go public with it. Yesterday I had a meeting with AQISQ (General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine of the People's Republic of China) and we were discussing the testing of different food products. Even if they didn't mention the numbers, but the report is satisfactory. That says they didn't have any more fatalities. And they also seem to be quite successful with the treatment guidelines they have issued.
WANG: But social commentator and economist Professor Hu Xingdou, from the Beijing Institute of Technology, has a rather different view. He says the Chinese government is breaking its own promises.
HU: The Chinese government has promised to disclose all details of the solutions and all details of the victims. So they should be responsible to the children and their own promises and reveal all truth to the public. They shouldn't be pouring oil on troubled waters and trying to minimise the impact of this scandal.
WANG: Professor Hu has welcomed the new food safety law, but says similar scandals could be avoided in future if Beijing makes its officials more publicly accountable.
HU: I see a great step forward from the draft of the food safety law, but I also notice, in the draft, there are nothing related to "accountability system for officials" and there's nothing written about reviewing the responsibility of the relevant officials. All articles are written against the companies, the sellers and the manufacturers. I hope the government could make significant revision to this draft and make officials more accountable.
WANG: His views are echoed by Dr Hans Troedsson at the World Health Organisation:
TROEDSSON: The real problem within the system, with this contamination of milk product has been the failure of reporting. I mean we know that there was a long delay, several months and maybe even up to half a year of delay of reporting from local authorities as well as from the companies. And that is very, very serious. Either it's due to ignorance, because people did not understand how serious it was, or it was deliberately not reported. Both of them are very serious. Of course the scale of this could have been much less and limited if the reporting could be done much thoroughly and in an effective way.
WANG: Dr Troedsson says the World Health Organisation is working closely with the Chinese government. It's also providing surveillance and monitoring expertise from Europe, where several countries have had their own bitter experiences of unsafe food.
TROEDSSON: I think around 20 years ago, we had a huge scandal in Austria, where they put glycol in the wine , and as you know, we had mad cow disease in the UK , and we had contaminated olive oil in Spain, and most recently , cheese contamination in Italy. So there is a lot of experiences in other countries. EU has been very effective in trying to address and improve the issue. And China is very interested to learn from other countries, so that's something we bring to the table.
