Another Melamine poisoning scandal

It seems China’s food contamination scandal has reach a new level of unprecedented uncertainty. Just as the Chinese government goes all out to try to restore confidence to its food industries, it was reported in the press of late that eggs from China were discovered to be contaminated with the same industrial toxic melamine, the same ingredient that found its way into milk based food products. It is suspected that livestock were fed with Melamine laden feeds and this in turn resulted in the toxins being passed to eggs.

There seems to be no end in sight to China’s serious violation of product quality and safety. China’s consumable products have long been known to fraught with health risk The Chinese health authorities are known to have concealed and curbed known health risk related issues, products and malpractices and in trying to put a stop to any complaints filed by its people against the local government officials. Consumers are often threatened and warned of serious consequences should they go ahead to file complaints in court against those thugs who has ties with local or provincial political arms and influence.

The advent of the Internet has created a major challenge to the Chinese authorities with regards to filtering and controlling the dissemination of information deemed sensitive and damaging to the authority image. Chinese netizens from all sorts’ walks of life are now able to communicate and discussed issues that affect daily life more freely. The number of Chinese Internet users is increasing by the day and this has profound impact on forcing the Chinese authority to come in term with dealing with issues pertaining to food safety.
Lets hope this is good start for China to clean up it acts on health and food safety.

Melamine poisoning

I hope those people involved in the baby milk powder contamination scheme be given the strictest and heaviest punishment. The number of infants affected by ‘Sanlu’ baby milk powder could amount to thousands since it is one of the most well known baby milk powder brands in China and popular with the Chinese for its competitive pricing.

Melamine
It was reported that Melamine, a plastic material has been added to either the milk by scrupulous farmers or during the process of the production of the baby milk powder.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melamine for more details on Melamine. Melamine has high nitrogen content is primarily used in Asia as fertilizer.

Melamine is added to maintain the concentration of protein while reducing the milk contents by means of adding more water thus reducing production cost.

The same toxin Melamine was reported being found in US brand pet foods manufactured in China and directly responsible for the death of a number of pets in the US which consumed ‘Menu Food’s pet food.

Symptoms
Symptoms of Melamine poisoning include vomiting, lack of appetite, lethargy, frequent urination and increased water intake. Melamine is toxic to kidneys and caused acute renal failures to pet dogs, cats and humans. There is no cure for pets down with Melamine poisoning. Treatment can prolong the life of some of the affected pets; life will never be the same for those who survived. Life will never be the same for those Chinese infants that survived Melamine poisoning. Somewhere down the road in their life, they will die of other complications, directly or indirectly caused by their earlier childhood Melamine poisoning.

Treatments
Standard treatments includes injection of intravenous fluids to help flush the kidney off the toxins, medication to control blood pressure, nausea and anemia, special diets to reduce strain on kidneys, and frequent blood and urine tests to monitor the patient’s kidney function.

Culprits
It is disgusting to know that Sanlu officials knew about the contamination as early as March this year but did not seek to warn the public nor alert the central health authorities. Corruptions and cover-ups of incidents of such are common in China. The Sanlu factory in question that produces the contaminated milk baby powder is located in Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei province, about 2 hours drives from Baoding.

Source of contamination
Shijiazhuang is home to a large number of textiles, pharmaceutical and chemical related industries. Just earlier this year, another case of food contamination involving meatballs produced for the Japanese Nissim brand in Shijiazhuang factory has the Japanese health authority scrambling quickly sending an investigation team to the China based factory to underpin the source of the contamination.