Post by Roderick on Sept 18, 2008 11:27:33 GMT 12
Read here - what the NZ media has NOT told us re China Milk.... Post a reply
sir_rick
18/9/2008 10:35:42 AM
Copied and pasted from this mornings . .
"The Telegraph" paper from calcutta, India.
MADE IN CHINA
China Diary - Neha Sahay
After the glory, the disgrace. The melamine-contaminated baby milk powder scandal is so painfully close to the Olympics that many Chinese are blaming the ‘damned Olympics’ for the cover-up. Of course food-safety officials were involved, but so was the Chinese search engine, Baidu. Last month, it offered the producer of the contaminated powder, San Lu, a complete black-out of negative references to it in return for a payment of three million yuan. It also suggested that to prevent punitive action, San Lu should threaten to reveal the ‘secret’ that all milk powder manufacturers in China use melamine and that they buy out victims to silence them.
Not that San Lu needed such advice. It had bought the silence of one victim as far back as May this year. He had requested San Lu to test the sample that had made his baby ill. The company offered a refund or an exchange but refused to divulge the test results, saying they were a “commercial secret”. He approached the authorities but they discouraged him from getting the milk tested on his own, saying it would cost a fortune. He then posted his problem on the internet. Ten days later, he asked that the post be closed. It is learnt that San Lu offered him more than 2,000 yuan worth of milk products on condition that he delete all posts on this topic. There was actually a written agreement that was traced by netizens, who also managed to find Baidu’s offer to San Lu.
Netizens have traced another complaint made to the authorities in July, from an insider — an employee of a San Lu milk collection point. Naming his boss, he described how after getting fake milk from farmers, the boss added some fake milk on his own so as to meet his milk target. The complainant hoped the authorities were keeping a check on San Lu’s milk, “specially in this Olympic year”. The authorities gave their usual ‘we have forwarded your complaint’ reply.
Anger and despair
The scam has assumed the dimensions of a national crisis, thanks to netizens and the press. Hospitals across the country were already discussing the strange phenomenon of infants turning up with kidney stones this year — 59 in one province alone. Doctors traced it to San Lu, and one of them decided to tell the press — just after the Olympics.
The greatest irony is that San Lu was literally above suspicion until now. Its products even had a seal issued by the food inspection authorities exempting it from quality inspection! Just last week, CCTV had, in its “Made in China” programme, which features well-known domestic brands, vouched for San Lu’s claim that its product went through 1,100 checks. The CCTV reporter had followed the process of making the milk powder, right from the cow that gave the milk. San Lu, in which the New Zealand giant, Fonterra, has a 47 per cent stake, is the official supplier of milk powder to China’s astronauts, and in January, its infant formula received the National Science and Technology Progress Award. Today, parents are queueing up to return San Lu packs, and netizens are vowing never to buy its products.
What has angered people most is the company’s prevarications. It first said the contaminated powder was manufactured by others using its name; then it blamed the milk farmers for contaminating the milk (the police even arrested some), and only finally admitted its own guilt — but without apology. It’s the poorest Chinese who buy San Lu, and netizens are recommending that the company send its employees to villages to warn them against using it.
The comments on the Net are a mixture of despair and anger. There’s shame that a domestic brand turned out to be fake, and greater shame that it was allowed to do so. “Beloved motherland, what are you giving me for my love to you?” reads one post.
sir_rick
18/9/2008 10:37:30 AM
URL of above post.
MADE IN CHINA
www.telegraphindia.com/1080918/jsp/opinion/story_9842044.jsp
sir_rick
18/9/2008 10:35:42 AM
Copied and pasted from this mornings . .
"The Telegraph" paper from calcutta, India.
MADE IN CHINA
China Diary - Neha Sahay
After the glory, the disgrace. The melamine-contaminated baby milk powder scandal is so painfully close to the Olympics that many Chinese are blaming the ‘damned Olympics’ for the cover-up. Of course food-safety officials were involved, but so was the Chinese search engine, Baidu. Last month, it offered the producer of the contaminated powder, San Lu, a complete black-out of negative references to it in return for a payment of three million yuan. It also suggested that to prevent punitive action, San Lu should threaten to reveal the ‘secret’ that all milk powder manufacturers in China use melamine and that they buy out victims to silence them.
Not that San Lu needed such advice. It had bought the silence of one victim as far back as May this year. He had requested San Lu to test the sample that had made his baby ill. The company offered a refund or an exchange but refused to divulge the test results, saying they were a “commercial secret”. He approached the authorities but they discouraged him from getting the milk tested on his own, saying it would cost a fortune. He then posted his problem on the internet. Ten days later, he asked that the post be closed. It is learnt that San Lu offered him more than 2,000 yuan worth of milk products on condition that he delete all posts on this topic. There was actually a written agreement that was traced by netizens, who also managed to find Baidu’s offer to San Lu.
Netizens have traced another complaint made to the authorities in July, from an insider — an employee of a San Lu milk collection point. Naming his boss, he described how after getting fake milk from farmers, the boss added some fake milk on his own so as to meet his milk target. The complainant hoped the authorities were keeping a check on San Lu’s milk, “specially in this Olympic year”. The authorities gave their usual ‘we have forwarded your complaint’ reply.
Anger and despair
The scam has assumed the dimensions of a national crisis, thanks to netizens and the press. Hospitals across the country were already discussing the strange phenomenon of infants turning up with kidney stones this year — 59 in one province alone. Doctors traced it to San Lu, and one of them decided to tell the press — just after the Olympics.
The greatest irony is that San Lu was literally above suspicion until now. Its products even had a seal issued by the food inspection authorities exempting it from quality inspection! Just last week, CCTV had, in its “Made in China” programme, which features well-known domestic brands, vouched for San Lu’s claim that its product went through 1,100 checks. The CCTV reporter had followed the process of making the milk powder, right from the cow that gave the milk. San Lu, in which the New Zealand giant, Fonterra, has a 47 per cent stake, is the official supplier of milk powder to China’s astronauts, and in January, its infant formula received the National Science and Technology Progress Award. Today, parents are queueing up to return San Lu packs, and netizens are vowing never to buy its products.
What has angered people most is the company’s prevarications. It first said the contaminated powder was manufactured by others using its name; then it blamed the milk farmers for contaminating the milk (the police even arrested some), and only finally admitted its own guilt — but without apology. It’s the poorest Chinese who buy San Lu, and netizens are recommending that the company send its employees to villages to warn them against using it.
The comments on the Net are a mixture of despair and anger. There’s shame that a domestic brand turned out to be fake, and greater shame that it was allowed to do so. “Beloved motherland, what are you giving me for my love to you?” reads one post.
sir_rick
18/9/2008 10:37:30 AM
URL of above post.
MADE IN CHINA
www.telegraphindia.com/1080918/jsp/opinion/story_9842044.jsp
?
I hate to think about it
..i want to die of old age...not Chinese food poisoning 
l thought at the time that Helen signed the deal, that shes in too bigger hurry to be the first country in the world to sign up with them. 
We have paid for the taking off the tariffs, by a whole range of factories closing, putting a lot of people out of work. 
