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China's product scandal

Rocky Mountain News

Published October 5, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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"There seems to be a combination of ignorance and deliberate failure to report, and this has put people's health at risk," Dr. Hans Troedsson, the World Health Organization representative in China, said of the country's latest product scandal.

Unfortunately, that statement could apply to a host of Chinese exports: Last year, pets were killed or sickened by melamine-tainted wheat gluten made in China. Then there was the biggest product recall in history as Mattel pulled back toys tainted with lead paint, and Australian toys were tainted with a chemical that metabolized into date-rape drug GHB when swallowed. Meanwhile, in the European Union, a cost-cutting ingredient in antifreeze, added as a thickening agent, was found in Chinese-made toothpaste.

And now, milk powder tainted with melamine, which originally killed four and sickened tens of thousands of mostly children in China when consumed in baby formula. The industrial chemical was allegedly added to watered-down milk products to bump up the nitrogen standards needed to pass quality checks.

Chinese-made Cadbury and Nestle products have tested positive for melamine, as has the White Rabbit candy exported to 50 countries, including the United States. Hong Kong officials even found melamine in a Japanese brand of cheesecake, which was made in China.

China claimed Wednesday that about 12 percent of the 285 dairy products they had checked after the scandal broke tested positive for melamine. But the delayed response is part of China's problem: By various accounts, there were red flags raised by health officials in July, warnings raised by a New Zealand company with a financial stake in the firm producing the tainted milk in early August, and finally a phone call from Prime Minister Helen Clark directly to the Chinese government before the foot-dragging PRC went public with the contamination on Sept. 11 - well past the Olympic closing ceremonies.

China is quick to find a scapegoat for each scandal. In July 2007, China's head of the Food and Drug Administration, Zheng Xiaoyu, was executed. The next month, the co-owner of the Chinese supplier to Mattel hanged himself.

Arrests in the milk scandal indicate blame will come just as quickly. The PRC needs to be quicker, though, in cleaning up a product safety system that encourages cutting corners, but endangers consumers beyond just its borders.