Peanut contamination

It's just been few months since China’s melamine milk product contamination scandal rock the nation,caused the lose of at least five children's life within the country and leads to global criticism of the country's daily industry and food health safety standards.

The chairman of Sanlu, the country's largest milk powder producer has been sentenced to life imprisonment and along two others, brothers were sentenced to death for their part in mixing melamine into the milk powder.

It is difficult to pinpoint and persecute all those involved in the melamine contamination scandal due to the way dairy food products are manufactured in China. Official corruptions further complicates and impedes the effort to maintain dairy and food industry safety standards.

China's dairy manufacturing process involved long chains of sub contractors that forms part of the manufacturing pipeline, from the front end processing preparation of the raw ingredients and materials to final packaging.

Anywhere along the dairy food manufacturing pipeline chain, some of these sub contractors could potentially cut corners so as to cut cost and thus compromise the product safety, mostly through various unscrupulous means such as mixing with dangerous toxic industry chemicals, compromised hygiene requirement standard and etc.


Sanlu officials in particular the chairwoman 'Tian WenHua' knew about the Melamine contamination as early as April last year but regrettably only choose to act on recalling the contaminated milk products several months later.

Apart from trying to avoid milk product recalls that may results in huge loses to the company, one main reason cited by her was the concern of such impact to the Beijing Olympic. There were even rumors that some of the high rank government officials were as much guilty as Sanlu officials and in some way influence the delay of recalling of the products to avoid bad publicity during the Olympic.

It is not surprising though since the Sanlu melamine contamination court hearing was a close door event much to the dismay of even the local Chinese, chances are that high level government corruptions charges are either toss out of the window or sweep under the carpet so to speak.


Now it seems that now the table has turn around with US made peanut butter by Peanut Corp contaminated with Salmonella bacteria. To date at least eight deaths associated with Salmonella bacteria were being reported throughout the nation.

Press reports indicates that the salmonella outbreak has been tied to Peanut Corp.'s peanut processing facility in Georgia. The most shocking news though is that just like Sanlu milk powder contamination scandal whereby officials knew about it months before disclosing it to the public, the FDA knew about unsanitary condition of the Peanut Corp's facility for well about nine months prior to publicly disclosing and warning consumers!.


Back in April 2008, around the time as Sanlu officials discovered their milk powder contaminated with Melamine, Peanut Corp try to ship some peanuts to Canada. The shipment was rejected by Canada health authorities after spot check indicates the presence of putrid, filthy and decomposed substance. The FDA was alerted of this but did nothing to contain the situation nor issue a public warning. Instead, Peanut Corp decides to continue to ship the contaminated peanuts to other countries including US itself.

All too often we start to put the finger at China for its gross violation of food health standard but what about other countries such as the US or Europe? Would anyone be found guilty for Peanut Corps mishandling of the contaminated peanuts , would the guilty parties be tried in the court, charge and thereafter sentence to death or life imprisonment for the death of well over eight consumers?

You be the judge, cause as for me it seems more like the kettle calling the pot black!