Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Monday, 17 November 2008
China, America and melamine (IHT)
China, America and melamine
By James E. McWilliams
Sunday, November 16, 2008
AUSTIN, Texas:
China's food supply appears to be awash in the industrial chemical melamine. Dangerous levels have been detected not only in milk and eggs, but also in chicken feed and wheat gluten, meaning that melamine is almost impossible to avoid in processed foods. Melamine in baby formula has killed at least four infants in China and sickened tens of thousands more.
In response, the United States has blasted lax Chinese regulations, while the Food and Drug Administration, in a rare move, announced last week that Chinese food products containing milk would be detained at the border until they were proved safe.
For all the outrage about Chinese melamine, what American consumers and government agencies have studiously failed to scrutinize is the place of melamine in America's own food system. In casting stones, we've forgotten that our house has its own exposed glass.
To be sure, in China some food manufacturers deliberately added melamine to products to increase profits. Makers of baby formula, for example, watered down their product, lowering the amount of protein and nutrients, then added melamine, which is cheap and fools tests measuring protein levels.
But melamine is also integral to the material life of any industrialized society. It's a common ingredient in cleaning products, waterproof plywood, plastic compounds, cement, ink and fire-retardant paint. Chemical plants throughout the United States produce millions of pounds of melamine a year.
Given the pervasiveness of melamine, it's always possible that trace elements will end up in food. The FDA thus sets the legal limit for melamine in food at 2.5 parts per million. This amount is indeed minuscule, a couple of sand grains in an expanse of desert that pose no real threat to public health. Moreover, the 2.5 parts per million figure is calculated for a person weighing 132 pounds - a cautious benchmark given that the average adult weighs 150 to 180 pounds.
But these figures obscure more than they reveal. First, while adults eat about one-fortieth of their weight every day, toddlers consume closer to one-tenth. Although scientists haven't measured the differential impact of melamine on infants versus adults, it's likely that this intensified ratio would at least double (if not quadruple) the impact of legal levels of melamine on toddlers.
This doubled exposure might not land a child in the hospital, but it could certainly contribute to the long-term kidney and liver problems that we know are caused by chronic exposure to melamine.
On a more concrete note, melamine not only has widespread industrial applications, but is also used to buttress the foundation of American agriculture.
Fertilizer companies commonly add melamine to their products because it helps control the rate at which nitrogen seeps into soil, thereby allowing the farmer to get more nutrient bang for the fertilizer buck. But the government doesn't regulate how much melamine is applied to the soil. This melamine accumulates as salt crystals in the ground, tainting the soil.
A related area of agricultural concern is animal feed. Chinese eggs seized last month in Hong Kong, for instance, contained elevated levels of melamine because of the melamine-laden wheat gluten used in the feed for the chickens that produced the eggs.
To think American consumers are immune to this unscrupulous behavior is to ignore the Byzantine reality of the global gluten trade. Tracking the flow of wheat gluten around the world is like trying to contain a drop of dye in a churning whirlpool.
More ominous, the United States imports most of its wheat gluten. Last year, for instance, the FDA reported that millions of Americans had eaten chicken fattened on feed with melamine-tainted gluten imported from China. Around the same time, Tyson Foods slaughtered and processed hogs that had eaten melamine-contaminated feed. The government decided not to recall the meat.
Only a week earlier, however, the FDA had announced that thousands of cats and dogs had died from melamine-laden pet food. This high-profile pet scandal did not prove to be a spur to reform so much as a red herring. Our attention was diverted to Fido and away from the animals we happen to kill and eat rather than spoil.
Frightening as this all sounds, the concerned consumer is not completely helpless. We can seek out organic foods, which are grown with fertilizer without melamine - unless that fertilizer was composted with manure from animals fed melamine-laden feed (always possible, as the Tyson example suggests).
We could further protect ourselves by choosing meat from grass-fed or truly free-range animals, assuming the grass was not fertilized with a conventional product (something that's also very hard to know).
But as all the caveats above indicate, these precautions will only go so far. Melamine, after all, points to the much larger relationship between industrial waste and American food production. Regulations might be lax when it comes to animal feed and fertilizer in China, but take a closer look at similar regulations in the United States and it becomes clear that they're vague enough to allow industries to "recycle" much of their waste into fertilizer and other products that form the basis of our domestic food supply.
As a result, toxic chemicals routinely enter our agricultural system through the back channels of this under-explored but insidious relationship.
So, sure, let's keep the heat on China. And, yes, let's take with a big dose of skepticism the Chinese government's assurances that they're improving the food supply.
At the same time, though, instead of delivering righteous condemnation, the United States should seize upon the melamine scandal as an opportunity to pass federal fertilizer standards backed by consistent testing for this compound, which could very well be hidden in plain sight.
James E. McWilliams, a history professor at Texas State University at San Marcos, is the author of "American Pests: The Losing War on Insects From Colonial Times to DDT."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/16/opinion/edmcwilliams.php
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Friday, 14 November 2008
U.S. food agency detains Chinese imports for testing (IHT)
U.S. food agency detains Chinese imports for testing
By Andrew Martin and Gardiner Harris
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Candy, snacks, cereal and any other products from China that contain milk will be detained at the border until tests prove that they are not contaminated, the U.S. government announced Thursday.
The Food and Drug Administration said that it had issued the alert because of concerns about Chinese products being contaminated with the toxic chemical melamine. Since September, more than 50,000 infants in China have become ill and at least four have died because they tainted infant formula.
Since then, melamine has been found in a range of products, including milk, eggs and fish feed. Companies in the United States have recalled several products, including non-dairy creamer and a type of candy, which are primarily sold in Asian markets, because of melamine concerns but to date the contamination here was not thought to be widespread.
"We're taking this action because it's the right thing to do for the public health," said Dr. Steven Solomon, an FDA deputy associate commissioner.
As a result, Chinese products that contain milk or milk powder will be detained until the manufacturer or its customer has the product tested and found to be free of contamination, or they show documentation indicating that the product does not contain milk or milk-derived ingredients.
"The burden shifts to the importer," Dr. Solomon said.
FDA analyses have detected melamine and cyanuric acid, another toxic chemical, in "a number of products that contain milk or milk-derived ingredients, including candy and beverages," according to an alert that the agency sent to field personnel. The alert also noted that inspectors in 13 other countries had discovered melamine in Chinese products including milk, yogurt, frozen desserts, biscuits, chocolates and cookies.
The FDA routinely blocks imports of individual food products, but it is rare for the agency to block an entire category of foods from a particular country. Last year, the FDA blocked five types of farm-raised seafood as well as vegetable protein from China because of repeated instances of contamination from unapproved animal drugs and food additives.
Unscrupulous food and feed dealers in China add melamine to their products because it fools tests that measure protein levels. Because it dissolves poorly, melamine can block the body's filtering system, potentially leading to kidney failure and death.
Dr. Solomon said that the alert would probably apply mostly to specialty products sold in Asian markets. But Benjamin England, a former lawyer at the FDA, described the latest alert as "massive" and said it could affect "a tremendous amount of goods."
"It's going to jam the ports up all the up the supply chain," said England, who represents food supply companies.
As a result of the earlier alerts on seafood and vegetable protein, most private laboratories that perform product tests for melamine already have long waiting lists, England said. And the FDA takes three to four weeks to review submitted tests, England said.
Chinese producers of shrimp, for instance, recently started breading their product to avoid a controversy over an anti-dumping lawsuit, England said. But breading often contains dairy, and that product could be detained at ports.
The effect of the alert will probably be long-lasting, England said, because importers must prove that each and every shipment is free of contamination.
"It's impossible to get off the alert list," England said.
By Andrew Martin and Gardiner Harris
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Candy, snacks, cereal and any other products from China that contain milk will be detained at the border until tests prove that they are not contaminated, the U.S. government announced Thursday.
The Food and Drug Administration said that it had issued the alert because of concerns about Chinese products being contaminated with the toxic chemical melamine. Since September, more than 50,000 infants in China have become ill and at least four have died because they tainted infant formula.
Since then, melamine has been found in a range of products, including milk, eggs and fish feed. Companies in the United States have recalled several products, including non-dairy creamer and a type of candy, which are primarily sold in Asian markets, because of melamine concerns but to date the contamination here was not thought to be widespread.
"We're taking this action because it's the right thing to do for the public health," said Dr. Steven Solomon, an FDA deputy associate commissioner.
As a result, Chinese products that contain milk or milk powder will be detained until the manufacturer or its customer has the product tested and found to be free of contamination, or they show documentation indicating that the product does not contain milk or milk-derived ingredients.
"The burden shifts to the importer," Dr. Solomon said.
FDA analyses have detected melamine and cyanuric acid, another toxic chemical, in "a number of products that contain milk or milk-derived ingredients, including candy and beverages," according to an alert that the agency sent to field personnel. The alert also noted that inspectors in 13 other countries had discovered melamine in Chinese products including milk, yogurt, frozen desserts, biscuits, chocolates and cookies.
The FDA routinely blocks imports of individual food products, but it is rare for the agency to block an entire category of foods from a particular country. Last year, the FDA blocked five types of farm-raised seafood as well as vegetable protein from China because of repeated instances of contamination from unapproved animal drugs and food additives.
Unscrupulous food and feed dealers in China add melamine to their products because it fools tests that measure protein levels. Because it dissolves poorly, melamine can block the body's filtering system, potentially leading to kidney failure and death.
Dr. Solomon said that the alert would probably apply mostly to specialty products sold in Asian markets. But Benjamin England, a former lawyer at the FDA, described the latest alert as "massive" and said it could affect "a tremendous amount of goods."
"It's going to jam the ports up all the up the supply chain," said England, who represents food supply companies.
As a result of the earlier alerts on seafood and vegetable protein, most private laboratories that perform product tests for melamine already have long waiting lists, England said. And the FDA takes three to four weeks to review submitted tests, England said.
Chinese producers of shrimp, for instance, recently started breading their product to avoid a controversy over an anti-dumping lawsuit, England said. But breading often contains dairy, and that product could be detained at ports.
The effect of the alert will probably be long-lasting, England said, because importers must prove that each and every shipment is free of contamination.
"It's impossible to get off the alert list," England said.
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Wednesday, 12 November 2008
Export woes may send Afghan farmers back to drugs (IHT)
Export woes may send Afghan farmers back to drugs (IHT)
Reuters
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
By Jonathon Burch
A bumper fruit harvest in Afghanistan this year has led to a surplus for domestic markets and with difficulties in exporting the goods, growers could return to harvesting opium, experts and farmers say.
Afghanistan used to produce some of the region's best fruits and nuts but insecurity led farmers to switch to opium, a crop that funds the Taliban insurgency, adding to insecurity and further boosting drug production.
While cultivation of opium, the raw ingredient for heroin, decreased this year, Afghanistan still produces some 90 percent of the world's supply of the drug.
Encouraged by international aid groups, some farmers have switched from growing opium to fruit and other products in recent years, but with little financial benefit and export problems, many could revert to more lucrative illicit crops.
"Farmers will always go for products with the highest benefit, especially with all the post-harvest problems," Mohammad Aqa, assistant representative for the U.N.'s food and agriculture organisation in Afghanistan (FAO), told Reuters.
But problems with processing, packaging and storing produce, along with poor access to international markets, means many farmers are not even able to cover their costs, said Aqa.
A fruit surplus is unlikely to meet the needs of millions of Afghans facing severe food shortages this winter as droughts in many areas of the country have hurt the staple wheat harvest.
"GOVERNMENT RESPONSIBLE"
Many farmers around the capital are feeling the strain and calling on the government to do more.
"If the government doesn't find us an export market and we don't benefit from our agricultural products and suffer financial harm like past years ... then we will have to return to poppy farming," said Safatullah Khan, a farmer on the outskirts of Kabul.
Due to the problems with exporting goods and the unregulated import of products already grown in Afghanistan, such as apples and grapes from China and Pakistan, farmers are forced to sell at very low prices, said Aqa.
A 7 kg (15 lb) bag of apples costs just $3 (1.93 pounds) in any of the capital's fruit markets.
"I agree with the farmers, they need more support. The government needs to at least limit these kind of imports ... in order to make them (farmers) competitive in the international market," said Aqa. "It's not a good time to introduce a free market in Afghanistan at the moment."
The government's export agency (EPAA) says it is aware of the problem and is working on finding a solution.
"We know that Afghan fruit production reached high levels this year, especially apples. These high levels of production have created problems and worries in society," said Rohullah Ahmadzai, spokesman for EPAA.
"I know the sharp increase in production within the market is worrying the farmers, but we will solve this issue soon," he said. He added that despite problems in exporting, $21 million worth of fruit was exported from Kandahar province alone.
(Editing by Valerie Lee)
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Friday, 7 November 2008
Now China points finger at foreign milk products (IHT)
Reuters
Thursday, November 6, 2008
BEIJING: China, embroiled in a tainted milk scandal that has made thousands of infants sick, has published a list of foreign companies that failed to meet quality standards for imported products ranging from milk powder to rosewater.
At least four children died and tens of thousands were made ill by drinking milk powder adulterated with melamine, prompting many worried parents to switch to foreign-made formula.
Melamine, a compound used in making plastic chairs among other uses, is added to food to cheat nutrition tests and has since been found in other dairy products, eggs and animal feed, prompting recalls of Chinese-made products around the world.
China's quality watchdog intercepted 191 batches of problem foreign goods in July, including milk powder and other dairy products made by Australian and South Korean companies, the Beijing News said, citing the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ).
Nearly nine tonnes of "Ausnutria" brand milk powder produced by Australian dairy company Tatura Industries and supplied to an Australian-Chinese joint venture in southern Hunan province had failed a standard for E. sakazaki, a bacteria, according to a list posted on AQSIQ's website (http://www.aqsiq.gov.cn ).
A company official at Tatura said the problem batch had passed quality inspections in Australia before being seized at Chinese customs.
"The products never made it into the local market," Tony McKenna, general manager of Nutritionals at Tatura, told Reuters by telephone.
"We've absolute faith in our quality systems, but we will comply with all of (the Chinese) requirements," McKenna said.
More than 14 tonnes of "Pauls" brand milk imported from Australia had also failed a bacteria standard, the notice said.
"Pauls" milk is produced by Parmalat Australia, a wholly owned subsidiary of Italian dairy giant Parmalat.
Parmalat Australia said in a statement emailed to Reuters it had never been informed of any problems with its products by Chinese authorities.
"We are keen to assist in any way to clarify the issue but it is unusual that the issue has just been raised now and only through the media," the statement said.
"All Parmalat products are subject to stringent quality standards, passing quality inspections in Australia prior to export," it added.
Authorities also seized more than 4,000 pounds (1,970 kg) of a brand of cheese supplied by an American company to Chinese dairy producer Inner Mongolia Yili Industrial Group, and other products ranging from British biscuits to chicken feet from Argentina.
It was not clear why the customs authority posted the list more than three months after the inspections, but the publication comes as China battles to improve its food safety system in the wake of a series of food and product-safety scandals.
(Reporting by Ian Ransom)
Thursday, November 6, 2008
BEIJING: China, embroiled in a tainted milk scandal that has made thousands of infants sick, has published a list of foreign companies that failed to meet quality standards for imported products ranging from milk powder to rosewater.
At least four children died and tens of thousands were made ill by drinking milk powder adulterated with melamine, prompting many worried parents to switch to foreign-made formula.
Melamine, a compound used in making plastic chairs among other uses, is added to food to cheat nutrition tests and has since been found in other dairy products, eggs and animal feed, prompting recalls of Chinese-made products around the world.
China's quality watchdog intercepted 191 batches of problem foreign goods in July, including milk powder and other dairy products made by Australian and South Korean companies, the Beijing News said, citing the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ).
Nearly nine tonnes of "Ausnutria" brand milk powder produced by Australian dairy company Tatura Industries and supplied to an Australian-Chinese joint venture in southern Hunan province had failed a standard for E. sakazaki, a bacteria, according to a list posted on AQSIQ's website (http://www.aqsiq.gov.cn ).
A company official at Tatura said the problem batch had passed quality inspections in Australia before being seized at Chinese customs.
"The products never made it into the local market," Tony McKenna, general manager of Nutritionals at Tatura, told Reuters by telephone.
"We've absolute faith in our quality systems, but we will comply with all of (the Chinese) requirements," McKenna said.
More than 14 tonnes of "Pauls" brand milk imported from Australia had also failed a bacteria standard, the notice said.
"Pauls" milk is produced by Parmalat Australia, a wholly owned subsidiary of Italian dairy giant Parmalat.
Parmalat Australia said in a statement emailed to Reuters it had never been informed of any problems with its products by Chinese authorities.
"We are keen to assist in any way to clarify the issue but it is unusual that the issue has just been raised now and only through the media," the statement said.
"All Parmalat products are subject to stringent quality standards, passing quality inspections in Australia prior to export," it added.
Authorities also seized more than 4,000 pounds (1,970 kg) of a brand of cheese supplied by an American company to Chinese dairy producer Inner Mongolia Yili Industrial Group, and other products ranging from British biscuits to chicken feet from Argentina.
It was not clear why the customs authority posted the list more than three months after the inspections, but the publication comes as China battles to improve its food safety system in the wake of a series of food and product-safety scandals.
(Reporting by Ian Ransom)
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Monday, 3 November 2008
China destroys tons of tainted animal feed (IHT)
By David Barboza
Sunday, November 2, 2008
SHANGHAI: Chinese regulators said over the weekend that they had confiscated and destroyed more than 3,600 tons of animal feed tainted with melamine, an industrial chemical that has been blamed for contaminating food supplies in China and for leading to global recalls of Chinese dairy products.
In what appears to be the biggest food safety crackdown in years, the government also said Saturday that it had closed 238 illegal feed makers in a series of nationwide sweeps that involved more than 369,000 government inspectors.
The aggressive moves come amid growing worries that the Chinese animal feed industry could be contaminated by melamine, endangering the national food supply and posing a health threat to consumers.
Over the past week and a half, eggs produced in three different Chinese provinces were found to be tainted with high levels of melamine, a chemical commonly used to make plastic and fertilizer. And in September, melamine-tainted milk supplies were blamed for sickening more than 50,000 children and causing at least four deaths in China.
Regulators in the southern province of Guangdong, which is heavily populated with about 80 million people and is also a major manufacturing center near Hong Kong, said they had discovered six tons of melamine-tainted animal feed.
An official at the Agriculture Ministry said that the government would mete out harsh punishments to those who were deliberately adding melamine to animal feed.
"It is illegal for any individual or any enterprise to add melamine into feed, and we will crack down uncompromisingly on melamine," Wang Zhicai, director of the animal husbandry and livestock bureau at the Agriculture Ministry, said Saturday, according to a transcript of his news conference.
But government officials also said that China's animal feed supply was largely safe and that the quality of feed had improved in recent years. They insisted that only a small number of rogue operators had deliberately added melamine to feed, often using it as cheap filler in order to save money.
The government said something similar early last year when several animal feed makers were caught exporting melamine-tainted feed ingredients to the United States and other countries, resulting in contaminated pet food supplies that sickened and killed cats and dogs.
That case led to the largest pet-food recall in U.S. history. Melamine dealers in China said in interviews last year and as recently as Friday that it was not uncommon for animal feed operators to purchase melamine scrap, a cheaper form of melamine waste, and use it as filler.
A massive food safety campaign was announced in China late last year, with inspectors closing down thousands of substandard and illegal food and feed operators. And yet this year melamine has been found in animal feed, dairy products and eggs in China, triggering food recalls and warnings all over Asia and even in the United States.
The Chinese government has responded by firing high-ranking regulators and by arresting dozens of people suspected of intentionally adding melamine to milk supplies. The government has repeatedly promised to ensure the safety of the Chinese food supply.
But the nation's food safety woes are troubling global food companies that import from China and consumers around the world who fear that melamine may turn up in their food. Although China is not a leading dairy exporter, it is one of the biggest food exporters in the world.
Still, some food safety officials are asking consumers not to be too alarmed because although the melamine-contaminated eggs found in Hong Kong exceeded the government limit, a young child would have to consume about two dozen in a single day to become sick.
The concentrations in some of the Chinese baby milk supply, however, were far higher and caused kidney stones or renal failure in tens of thousands of children.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
SHANGHAI: Chinese regulators said over the weekend that they had confiscated and destroyed more than 3,600 tons of animal feed tainted with melamine, an industrial chemical that has been blamed for contaminating food supplies in China and for leading to global recalls of Chinese dairy products.
In what appears to be the biggest food safety crackdown in years, the government also said Saturday that it had closed 238 illegal feed makers in a series of nationwide sweeps that involved more than 369,000 government inspectors.
The aggressive moves come amid growing worries that the Chinese animal feed industry could be contaminated by melamine, endangering the national food supply and posing a health threat to consumers.
Over the past week and a half, eggs produced in three different Chinese provinces were found to be tainted with high levels of melamine, a chemical commonly used to make plastic and fertilizer. And in September, melamine-tainted milk supplies were blamed for sickening more than 50,000 children and causing at least four deaths in China.
Regulators in the southern province of Guangdong, which is heavily populated with about 80 million people and is also a major manufacturing center near Hong Kong, said they had discovered six tons of melamine-tainted animal feed.
An official at the Agriculture Ministry said that the government would mete out harsh punishments to those who were deliberately adding melamine to animal feed.
"It is illegal for any individual or any enterprise to add melamine into feed, and we will crack down uncompromisingly on melamine," Wang Zhicai, director of the animal husbandry and livestock bureau at the Agriculture Ministry, said Saturday, according to a transcript of his news conference.
But government officials also said that China's animal feed supply was largely safe and that the quality of feed had improved in recent years. They insisted that only a small number of rogue operators had deliberately added melamine to feed, often using it as cheap filler in order to save money.
The government said something similar early last year when several animal feed makers were caught exporting melamine-tainted feed ingredients to the United States and other countries, resulting in contaminated pet food supplies that sickened and killed cats and dogs.
That case led to the largest pet-food recall in U.S. history. Melamine dealers in China said in interviews last year and as recently as Friday that it was not uncommon for animal feed operators to purchase melamine scrap, a cheaper form of melamine waste, and use it as filler.
A massive food safety campaign was announced in China late last year, with inspectors closing down thousands of substandard and illegal food and feed operators. And yet this year melamine has been found in animal feed, dairy products and eggs in China, triggering food recalls and warnings all over Asia and even in the United States.
The Chinese government has responded by firing high-ranking regulators and by arresting dozens of people suspected of intentionally adding melamine to milk supplies. The government has repeatedly promised to ensure the safety of the Chinese food supply.
But the nation's food safety woes are troubling global food companies that import from China and consumers around the world who fear that melamine may turn up in their food. Although China is not a leading dairy exporter, it is one of the biggest food exporters in the world.
Still, some food safety officials are asking consumers not to be too alarmed because although the melamine-contaminated eggs found in Hong Kong exceeded the government limit, a young child would have to consume about two dozen in a single day to become sick.
The concentrations in some of the Chinese baby milk supply, however, were far higher and caused kidney stones or renal failure in tens of thousands of children.
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Saturday, 1 November 2008
China's contaminated food scandal widens (IHT)
A worker among stacks of eggs at a plant in suburban Beijing. (Andy Wong/The Associated Press)
By David Barboza
Friday, October 31, 2008
SHANGHAI: Chinese regulators are widening their investigation into contaminated food amid growing signs that the toxic industrial chemical melamine has leached into the nation's animal feed supplies, posing health risks to consumers.
The announcement came after food safety tests earlier this week found that eggs produced in three different provinces in China were contaminated with melamine, which is blamed for causing kidney stones and renal failure in infants. The tests have led to recalls of eggs and consumer warnings.
The reports are another serious blow to China's agriculture industry, which is already struggling to cope with its worst food safety scandal in decades after melamine-tainted milk supplies sickened over 50,000 children, caused at least four deaths and led to global recalls of goods produced with Chinese dairy products earlier this fall.
The cases are fueling global concerns about Chinese food. In Hong Kong, food safety officials announced this week that they would begin testing a wider variety of foods for melamine, including vegetables, flour and meat products. On the mainland, Shanghai and other cities are moving aggressively to test a wide variety of food products for melamine, including fish and livestock feed, according to the state-run news media, which has in recent days carried multiple reports on melamine in animal feed.
In the United States, worried consumers frantically e-mailed one another on Thursday and Friday about the possibility of melamine-tainted Halloween treats following a spate of news reports that some candies and chocolates made in China or with ingredients sourced in China had tested positive for high levels of melamine or been destroyed in recent weeks as a cautionary measure.
A spokeswoman for the Food and Drug Administration said the agency was adjusting a nationwide sampling of products for melamine "as necessary." The FDA, along with state and local authorities, have been sampling products in Asian markets since mid-September for traces of melamine.
"Thus far, most of FDA's testing of milk and milk-derived ingredients and products from China focused on human foods, but have included animal feeds as well," said the spokeswoman, Stephanie Kwisnek. "The FDA is currently re-evaluating its overall approach to keeping these products out of the U.S. market."
Asian food safety experts warned consumers not to grow too alarmed over the finding of tainted eggs because they contained much lower concentrations of melamine than the powdered baby formula that caused such widespread problems in China.
Hong Kong food safety officials said a child would have to eat about two dozen of the eggs in a single day to become ill.
Still, if eggs, milk and animal feed supplies are tainted, there is the specter of an even wider array of foods that could come under scrutiny, everything from pork and chicken supplies to bread, biscuits, eggs, cakes, seafood and candy.
China is also one of the world's largest exporters of food and food ingredients, including meats, seafood, beverages and vitamins.
Melamine was banned as an animal feed additive in China in July 2007. And last year, United States regulators put tough restrictions on the amount of melamine allowed in food products.
But interviews on Friday, and over the past year, with several Chinese chemical dealers who sell melamine suggests that melamine scrap, the substantially cheaper waste left over after producing melamine, continued to be added to animal and fish feed.
"I heard some melamine dealers still sell to animal feed producers," said Qin Huaizhen, manager at the Gaocheng Kaishun Chemical Co. in city of Shijiazhuang, though he insisted he has never sold melamine to animal feed producers. "In Shandong province many animal feed manufacturers buy melamine scrap."
Two other melamine dealers in east and south China said that only after the recent dairy scandal did government regulators begin to closely monitor the sale of melamine to animal feed producers.
Kidney experts said that there has been very little research into how the chemical disrupts kidney function. Dr. Fredric Coe, a professor of medicine at the University of Chicago, said that melamine is likely concentrated in the kidneys into crystals that the body cannot dissolve. Those crystals clog many of the kidney's nearly one million nephrons, which are tiny filtering units, in a process very different from the usual way kidney stones are formed, Coe said. Urination slows or ceases, and patients suffer acute kidney failure.
Some food-safety experts are perplexed as to how melamine was allowed to seep into China's food supplies after melamine-tainted animal feed exports from China were blamed last year for sickening dogs and cats in the United States, touching off international trade and food safety disputes between the two countries.
"A year ago, everybody should have been in a complete panic about it, and done something then," said Marion Nestle, a professor of food studies and public health at New York University and the author of "Pet Food Politics" (University of California Press, 2008), which examines the pet food problem in detail. "Someone should have required that melamine not be in any food product."
The pet food case led to a vast recall in the United States and other parts of the world and also sparked a lengthy food safety crackdown in China, with regulators boasting that they had closed down thousands of illegal or substandard food factories and slaughterhouses.
Still, the Chinese government never made clear last year or even this year how extensively it had tested its own food and feed supply for melamine, even though melamine dealers acknowledged it was common to sell melamine scrap into the food and feed market.
In the dairy case, Chinese investigators have arrested dozens of suspects and blamed the scandal on a group of rogue milk and melamine dealers who they accuse of intentionally adding melamine, which is commonly used to produce plastic and fertilizer, to milk supplies as cheap filler in order to save money.
High-ranking government officials, including the head of the nation's quality watchdog, have been fired in the wake of the recalls and Beijing has acknowledged that "lax regulation" contributed to the scandal.
Similarly, last year, regulators in Beijing largely blamed the pet-food debacle on a pair of small exporters, who regulators said shipped feed or feed ingredients contaminated with melamine in order to save money and cheat the buyers.
Beijing also insisted its food safety problems were exaggerated, perhaps partly as a protectionist ploy to slow the boom in Chinese imports.
But several farmers and melamine scrap dealers said in interviews last year that melamine had been used for years in animal feed, particularly fish feed. Many melamine producers say they believed melamine scrap was nontoxic and would not be harmful to animals or humans.
Melamine dealers say the government crackdown on the sale to feed producers only occurred this year, after the Sanlu Group dairy company announced that its infant milk formula was tainted with melamine. That announcement, which came in September, triggered a nationwide recall and government announcements that other major dairy brands were also selling melamine-contaminated milk.
"Before the Sanlu scandal, we were not banned from selling melamine to anyone" Niu Qinglin, manager of the Hebei Jinglong Fengli Chemical Co., said in a telephone interview Friday. "I had heard melamine dealers sell melamine to animal feed companies and food companies; it was common before the Sanlu scandal."
Niu, however, said he never sold melamine or melamine scrap to food or feed producers. And he noted that regulators had moved in on the trade. "Now, the government regulates that melamine cannot be sold to any animal feed manufacturers or food processing companies," he said.
Friday, October 31, 2008
SHANGHAI: Chinese regulators are widening their investigation into contaminated food amid growing signs that the toxic industrial chemical melamine has leached into the nation's animal feed supplies, posing health risks to consumers.
The announcement came after food safety tests earlier this week found that eggs produced in three different provinces in China were contaminated with melamine, which is blamed for causing kidney stones and renal failure in infants. The tests have led to recalls of eggs and consumer warnings.
The reports are another serious blow to China's agriculture industry, which is already struggling to cope with its worst food safety scandal in decades after melamine-tainted milk supplies sickened over 50,000 children, caused at least four deaths and led to global recalls of goods produced with Chinese dairy products earlier this fall.
The cases are fueling global concerns about Chinese food. In Hong Kong, food safety officials announced this week that they would begin testing a wider variety of foods for melamine, including vegetables, flour and meat products. On the mainland, Shanghai and other cities are moving aggressively to test a wide variety of food products for melamine, including fish and livestock feed, according to the state-run news media, which has in recent days carried multiple reports on melamine in animal feed.
In the United States, worried consumers frantically e-mailed one another on Thursday and Friday about the possibility of melamine-tainted Halloween treats following a spate of news reports that some candies and chocolates made in China or with ingredients sourced in China had tested positive for high levels of melamine or been destroyed in recent weeks as a cautionary measure.
A spokeswoman for the Food and Drug Administration said the agency was adjusting a nationwide sampling of products for melamine "as necessary." The FDA, along with state and local authorities, have been sampling products in Asian markets since mid-September for traces of melamine.
"Thus far, most of FDA's testing of milk and milk-derived ingredients and products from China focused on human foods, but have included animal feeds as well," said the spokeswoman, Stephanie Kwisnek. "The FDA is currently re-evaluating its overall approach to keeping these products out of the U.S. market."
Asian food safety experts warned consumers not to grow too alarmed over the finding of tainted eggs because they contained much lower concentrations of melamine than the powdered baby formula that caused such widespread problems in China.
Hong Kong food safety officials said a child would have to eat about two dozen of the eggs in a single day to become ill.
Still, if eggs, milk and animal feed supplies are tainted, there is the specter of an even wider array of foods that could come under scrutiny, everything from pork and chicken supplies to bread, biscuits, eggs, cakes, seafood and candy.
China is also one of the world's largest exporters of food and food ingredients, including meats, seafood, beverages and vitamins.
Melamine was banned as an animal feed additive in China in July 2007. And last year, United States regulators put tough restrictions on the amount of melamine allowed in food products.
But interviews on Friday, and over the past year, with several Chinese chemical dealers who sell melamine suggests that melamine scrap, the substantially cheaper waste left over after producing melamine, continued to be added to animal and fish feed.
"I heard some melamine dealers still sell to animal feed producers," said Qin Huaizhen, manager at the Gaocheng Kaishun Chemical Co. in city of Shijiazhuang, though he insisted he has never sold melamine to animal feed producers. "In Shandong province many animal feed manufacturers buy melamine scrap."
Two other melamine dealers in east and south China said that only after the recent dairy scandal did government regulators begin to closely monitor the sale of melamine to animal feed producers.
Kidney experts said that there has been very little research into how the chemical disrupts kidney function. Dr. Fredric Coe, a professor of medicine at the University of Chicago, said that melamine is likely concentrated in the kidneys into crystals that the body cannot dissolve. Those crystals clog many of the kidney's nearly one million nephrons, which are tiny filtering units, in a process very different from the usual way kidney stones are formed, Coe said. Urination slows or ceases, and patients suffer acute kidney failure.
Some food-safety experts are perplexed as to how melamine was allowed to seep into China's food supplies after melamine-tainted animal feed exports from China were blamed last year for sickening dogs and cats in the United States, touching off international trade and food safety disputes between the two countries.
"A year ago, everybody should have been in a complete panic about it, and done something then," said Marion Nestle, a professor of food studies and public health at New York University and the author of "Pet Food Politics" (University of California Press, 2008), which examines the pet food problem in detail. "Someone should have required that melamine not be in any food product."
The pet food case led to a vast recall in the United States and other parts of the world and also sparked a lengthy food safety crackdown in China, with regulators boasting that they had closed down thousands of illegal or substandard food factories and slaughterhouses.
Still, the Chinese government never made clear last year or even this year how extensively it had tested its own food and feed supply for melamine, even though melamine dealers acknowledged it was common to sell melamine scrap into the food and feed market.
In the dairy case, Chinese investigators have arrested dozens of suspects and blamed the scandal on a group of rogue milk and melamine dealers who they accuse of intentionally adding melamine, which is commonly used to produce plastic and fertilizer, to milk supplies as cheap filler in order to save money.
High-ranking government officials, including the head of the nation's quality watchdog, have been fired in the wake of the recalls and Beijing has acknowledged that "lax regulation" contributed to the scandal.
Similarly, last year, regulators in Beijing largely blamed the pet-food debacle on a pair of small exporters, who regulators said shipped feed or feed ingredients contaminated with melamine in order to save money and cheat the buyers.
Beijing also insisted its food safety problems were exaggerated, perhaps partly as a protectionist ploy to slow the boom in Chinese imports.
But several farmers and melamine scrap dealers said in interviews last year that melamine had been used for years in animal feed, particularly fish feed. Many melamine producers say they believed melamine scrap was nontoxic and would not be harmful to animals or humans.
Melamine dealers say the government crackdown on the sale to feed producers only occurred this year, after the Sanlu Group dairy company announced that its infant milk formula was tainted with melamine. That announcement, which came in September, triggered a nationwide recall and government announcements that other major dairy brands were also selling melamine-contaminated milk.
"Before the Sanlu scandal, we were not banned from selling melamine to anyone" Niu Qinglin, manager of the Hebei Jinglong Fengli Chemical Co., said in a telephone interview Friday. "I had heard melamine dealers sell melamine to animal feed companies and food companies; it was common before the Sanlu scandal."
Niu, however, said he never sold melamine or melamine scrap to food or feed producers. And he noted that regulators had moved in on the trade. "Now, the government regulates that melamine cannot be sold to any animal feed manufacturers or food processing companies," he said.
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Friday, 31 October 2008
9 families sue Chinese milk company (IHT)
By Edward Wong
Thursday, October 30, 2008
BEIJING: Nine families with babies suffering kidney problems, allegedly because of contaminated milk, have filed separate lawsuits against one of China's largest milk companies, according to lawyers representing the families. They are the latest lawsuits to be filed in China's worst food safety scandal in years.
The lawsuits were filed on Wednesday in the northern city of Shijiazhuang, the location of the headquarters of Sanlu Group, a company at the center of the milk scandal. The lawsuits demand compensation from Sanlu.
The milk scandal and the lawsuits have become politically sensitive matters, and so far no judge has agreed to hear a case in court. At least three other lawsuits had already been filed before Wednesday.
Both product liability lawsuits and class-action lawsuits are rare in China. This means that Chinese consumers have one less layer of protection against defective practices by big companies if governmental regulatory processes fail, as they have in many recent food and product safety cases, some legal scholars say.
The milk scandal first emerged in September, when it was revealed that babies drinking milk formula tainted with a toxic chemical called melamine had developed kidney stones. Melamine had been illegally added to dairy products to artificially boost protein counts to meet nutrition standards.
At least four babies have died and at least 53,000 other children have fallen ill, according to reports from official news agencies.
Since September, a wide range of food products from China have been discovered to have melamine, from yogurt and eggs to biscuits. Countries around the world have ordered recalls of Chinese-made food products suspected of being tainted with melamine.
Senior government officials and company executives have been fired as the scandal has widened, and dozens of people suspected of being involved have been arrested.
Given the Communist Party's sensitivities over the scandal, many lawyers in China do not have high hopes that the lawsuits will get a fair hearing in the courts, if they are heard at all.
The families, which are from several provinces, hope that the central government will eventually provide some sort of compensation for the ill children, said Ji Cheng, a lawyer with the Deheng Law Office, a large firm based in Beijing that is representing the nine families.
Each family had an infant that had to go to the hospital because of kidney stones, and six are still in the hospital, Ji said. The families have kept hospital records and complete records of their purchases of Sanlu baby formula, he added. The families are asking for at least 14,000 yuan, or about $2,000, per child in compensation payments from Sanlu.
Ji said the lawyers did not file a class-action lawsuit on behalf of all the parents because each case had different details.
Class-action lawsuits are highly discouraged in the Chinese legal system. Technically they can be filed, but onerous rules put in place in recent years by official legal bodies have made it difficult for lawyers to file such lawsuits. Some Chinese legal scholars say the government views class-action lawsuits as a threat to social stability.
Over the course of the milk scandal, some lawyers have been discouraged from representing families seeking damages from dairy companies or from the government.
In the first weeks of the scandal, more than 100 lawyers put themselves on a list of lawyers volunteering to dispense legal advice to the families. But at least two dozen have since dropped their names from the list; most of them are from Henan Province, where lawyers have complained of subtle pressure put on them by local officials.
Huang Yuanxi contributed research.
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Thursday, 30 October 2008
Hong Kong finds more tainted eggs from China (IHT)
By David Barboza
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
SHANGHAI: Hong Kong officials said that for the second time in a week they had found a batch of eggs imported from China that contain high levels of melamine, the same industrial chemical that has been blamed for contaminating China's milk supplies.
The announcement, which came late Tuesday from the territory's food safety agency, is adding to concerns that melamine contamination may be more widespread in China's food supplies.
While Hong Kong officials cautioned that children and adults would have to eat a large number of tainted eggs in a single day to fall ill, the report is another blow to China's agriculture industry.
China is already struggling to cope with a milk scandal that has sickened over 50,000 children and caused the deaths of at least four infants this year after they consumed melamine-tainted baby milk formula. That case triggered a global recall of foods made with Chinese dairy products.
The Chinese government has tried to move boldly to deal with the crisis, promising to overhaul the nation's food safety system, announcing dozens of arrests and sacking high-ranking government officials, including the head of the nation's top quality inspection agency.
The government has attributed the dairy scandal to organized groups of scam artists who regulators say were intentionally adding melamine to watered-down milk to artificially boost its protein reading in quality tests.
Chinese regulators say they are now investigating how melamine got into eggs. The government is also doing spot checks in supermarkets in some cities, like Shanghai.
Zhang Zhongjun, an official in Beijing with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, said he met Wednesday with officials from China's Agriculture Ministry and was told they believed the problem eggs in Hong Kong were probably contaminated by melamine-tainted animal feed.
But Zhang said the government told him the source of the contamination was not yet known. "It's not clear whether the melamine was added by humans or by pollution," he said.
Some food safety officials say that if chicken feed is contaminated, it is possible hog and fish feed could be also.
The chemical, which is used to produce some plastics and fertilizer, was blamed last year for contaminating Chinese feed ingredients that were exported to the United States and eventually sickened dogs and cats. The case led to a major pet food recall.
On Monday, Wal-Mart Stores said some of its stores had pulled the Hanwei brand of eggs from shelves in China as a precaution after the Hong Kong government finding.
The first batch of eggs that tested positive for high melamine levels by the Hong Kong Center for Food Safety came from a company in Dalian, in northeast China. Officials from the region told Xinhua, the government news agency, that the contamination may have come from local poultry farms.
According to a notice posted on the web site of the Dalian Hanwei Food Co., regulators learned on Sept. 27 that some eggs were contaminated. The company said it was ordered to recall eggs, and exports to Hong Kong were halted by regulators in early October.
The second batch of tainted eggs found in Hong Kong was from the Jingshan Agriproducts Company in Hubei Province. Pan Fengxia, the company's general manager, confirmed by telephone Wednesday that eggs tested in Hong Kong were found to have higher levels of melamine than permitted, but she did not know why. "I never heard that melamine was added into feed or my products," she said. "Never."
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Tuesday, 21 October 2008
China enacts major land reform (IHT)
By Jim Yardley
Sunday, October 19, 2008
BEIJING: Following days of uncertainty, the ruling Communist Party announced a rural reform policy Sunday that for the first time would allow farmers to lease or transfer land-use rights, a step that advocates say would bolster lagging incomes in the Chinese countryside.
The new policy, announced by Chinese state media, marks a major economic reform and is also rich in historical resonance, coinciding with the 30th anniversary of the land reforms by Deng Xiaoping, which were considered the first critical steps in the policies that have fueled China's rapid economic growth.
For President Hu Jintao, whose tenure has disappointed some reformers, the new policy seems intended to position him as a worthy heir to Deng. "The new measures adopted are seen by economists as a major breakthrough in land reforms initiated by late leader Deng Xiaping 30 years ago," reported Xinhua, the state-run Chinese news agency.
Currently, Chinese farmers can sell what they produce but are mostly prohibited from transferring their collectively-held land-use rights. Under the new policy, the government will establish markets where farmers can "sub-contract, lease, exchange or swap" land-use rights or join cooperatives. Xinhua reported that giving farmers this latitude would enable them to become more efficient by increasing the size of farms while also providing income that can be used to start new businesses.
The fate of the reform program has been uncertain for the past week. Analysts had expected an announcement last Sunday after the conclusion of an important annual Communist Party planning session. But the communiqué released after the meeting made no mention of land reform, fueling speculation that opponents might have derailed the plan.
Critics had warned that weakening the existing system of collective village ownership could deprive peasants of the security of having a piece of land and possibly lead to millions of landless farmers. But the existing system has become rife with corruption, as local officials and developers have illegally seized farmland for urban expansion while paying minimal compensation to farmers.
Signs that the reforms had been approved began to appear as the week wore on. In Chengdu, a government land market opened last Monday. On Thursday, a leading Communist Party magazine published an article by one of the country's most senior official on rural issues in which he said the party would create a market for transferring land-use rights in the countryside.
Under the current system, farmers are assigned small plots of land. Reform advocates say allowing leasing or transfer would enable the creation of larger, more efficient farms that could increase output. The new program also pledges to uphold "the most stringent farmland protection system" and require that local officials maintain 120 million hectares, or 300 million acres, of farmland, the minimum deemed necessary to feed the world's most populous nation.
Deng's reforms broke up the collective use, if not ownership, of land and created a household registration system that assigned land to individual families to use as they saw fit. Those reforms enabled farm incomes to rise sharply during the early 1980s, even as city dwellers suffered.
But the later creation of an urban real estate market saw an explosion of wealth in the cities that has contributed to a sharp income divide between affluent city dwellers and impoverished peasants. In recent years, rural protests have become increasingly common as disgruntled farmers have demonstrated against illegal land grabs or corrupt local officials. At the same times, tens of millions of farmers have flocked to cities in search of work, leaving plots of land to be tended by their elderly parents.
Reducing the rural-urban income gap has been a major priority for Hu — yet it has continued to widen in recent years as China's has become one of the most unequal societies in the world. On Sunday, Xinhua also announced the party's intention to establish a modern rural financial system to extend more credit and investment into the countryside. Chinese banking regulators have been ordered to establish 40 more rural banking institutions by year's end.
Raising incomes in the countryside is a major part of the government's effort to boost China's domestic consumption at a time when the overall economy is slowing. More than 700 million people are still designated as rural inhabitants, yet their spending is minimal. Economists say that jump-starting the rural economy is one way to offset the possibility of a recession as exports are expected to slow because of the global financial crisis.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
BEIJING: Following days of uncertainty, the ruling Communist Party announced a rural reform policy Sunday that for the first time would allow farmers to lease or transfer land-use rights, a step that advocates say would bolster lagging incomes in the Chinese countryside.
The new policy, announced by Chinese state media, marks a major economic reform and is also rich in historical resonance, coinciding with the 30th anniversary of the land reforms by Deng Xiaoping, which were considered the first critical steps in the policies that have fueled China's rapid economic growth.
For President Hu Jintao, whose tenure has disappointed some reformers, the new policy seems intended to position him as a worthy heir to Deng. "The new measures adopted are seen by economists as a major breakthrough in land reforms initiated by late leader Deng Xiaping 30 years ago," reported Xinhua, the state-run Chinese news agency.
Currently, Chinese farmers can sell what they produce but are mostly prohibited from transferring their collectively-held land-use rights. Under the new policy, the government will establish markets where farmers can "sub-contract, lease, exchange or swap" land-use rights or join cooperatives. Xinhua reported that giving farmers this latitude would enable them to become more efficient by increasing the size of farms while also providing income that can be used to start new businesses.
The fate of the reform program has been uncertain for the past week. Analysts had expected an announcement last Sunday after the conclusion of an important annual Communist Party planning session. But the communiqué released after the meeting made no mention of land reform, fueling speculation that opponents might have derailed the plan.
Critics had warned that weakening the existing system of collective village ownership could deprive peasants of the security of having a piece of land and possibly lead to millions of landless farmers. But the existing system has become rife with corruption, as local officials and developers have illegally seized farmland for urban expansion while paying minimal compensation to farmers.
Signs that the reforms had been approved began to appear as the week wore on. In Chengdu, a government land market opened last Monday. On Thursday, a leading Communist Party magazine published an article by one of the country's most senior official on rural issues in which he said the party would create a market for transferring land-use rights in the countryside.
Under the current system, farmers are assigned small plots of land. Reform advocates say allowing leasing or transfer would enable the creation of larger, more efficient farms that could increase output. The new program also pledges to uphold "the most stringent farmland protection system" and require that local officials maintain 120 million hectares, or 300 million acres, of farmland, the minimum deemed necessary to feed the world's most populous nation.
Deng's reforms broke up the collective use, if not ownership, of land and created a household registration system that assigned land to individual families to use as they saw fit. Those reforms enabled farm incomes to rise sharply during the early 1980s, even as city dwellers suffered.
But the later creation of an urban real estate market saw an explosion of wealth in the cities that has contributed to a sharp income divide between affluent city dwellers and impoverished peasants. In recent years, rural protests have become increasingly common as disgruntled farmers have demonstrated against illegal land grabs or corrupt local officials. At the same times, tens of millions of farmers have flocked to cities in search of work, leaving plots of land to be tended by their elderly parents.
Reducing the rural-urban income gap has been a major priority for Hu — yet it has continued to widen in recent years as China's has become one of the most unequal societies in the world. On Sunday, Xinhua also announced the party's intention to establish a modern rural financial system to extend more credit and investment into the countryside. Chinese banking regulators have been ordered to establish 40 more rural banking institutions by year's end.
Raising incomes in the countryside is a major part of the government's effort to boost China's domestic consumption at a time when the overall economy is slowing. More than 700 million people are still designated as rural inhabitants, yet their spending is minimal. Economists say that jump-starting the rural economy is one way to offset the possibility of a recession as exports are expected to slow because of the global financial crisis.
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Lawsuits in China's milk scandal unlikely to be settled in court (IHT)
Yi Yongsheng, whose baby boy died after drinking tainted milk, and his daughter, Yi Xuan. (Greg Baker/The Associated Press)
Lawsuits in China's milk scandal unlikely to be settled in court
By Edward Wong
Friday, October 17, 2008
BEIJING: The first sign of trouble was powder in the baby's urine. Then there was blood. By the time the parents took their son to the hospital, he had no urine at all.
Kidney stones were the problem, doctors told the parents. The baby died on May 1 in the hospital, just two weeks after the first symptoms appeared. His name was Yi Kaixuan. He was 6 months old.
The parents filed a lawsuit on Monday in the arid northwest province of Gansu, where the family lives, asking for compensation from Sanlu Group, the maker of the powdered baby formula that Kaixuan had been drinking. It seemed like a clear-cut liability case; since last month, Sanlu has been at the center of China's biggest contaminated food crisis in years. But as in two other courts dealing with related lawsuits, judges have so far declined to hear the case.
Tainted infant formula is the latest in a long string of food and drug safety problems that have exposed corruption and inefficiency among China's regulators. But the problem goes well beyond the inability of regulators to police a huge, dynamic economy. Companies that produce shoddy goods rarely face financial penalties from the legal system, run by the Communist Party.
Some lawyers and judges are making great efforts in China to establish the power of the courts. Still, courts often remain passive pawns in the party's efforts to handle big disputes behind closed doors.
"I felt myself falling apart when he died, and my wife even avoids thinking about it now," the baby's father, Yi Yongsheng, 30, said by telephone from the city of Xian, where he works menial construction jobs to send money home. "I don't place too much hope in the lawsuit. I just want to ask for justice."
Chinese officials, under pressure to promote fast rates of economic growth and to enforce social stability, routinely favor producers over consumers. Product liability lawsuits remain difficult to file and harder still to win, especially if the company involved is state-owned or has close connections to the government.
Officials also view high-profile lawsuits as a potential political threat and go to great lengths to silence the plaintiffs rather than allowing the wheels of justice to turn. In the milk crisis, officials in several provinces have put pressure on many involved, including parents, lawyers and judges, to drop the issue, said legal scholars and lawyers who have volunteered to help the parents.
Western lawyers would probably have lined up to sue Sanlu. One of China's largest milk companies, Sanlu, based in the city of Shijiazhuang, was the most prominent dairy producer found to sell milk products tainted with melamine, a toxic chemical illegally added to watered-down milk to artificially increase the protein count and fool safety tests. At least four babies have died from complications resulting from kidney stones, and 53,000 children have been sickened. Senior government officials and company executives were fired after evidence emerged of a wide-ranging cover-up.
In China, Yi and his wife, who are seeking $152,000 from Sanlu, are among only a handful of Chinese who have filed a lawsuit against a dairy company. The plaintiffs are all individual families; lawyers say there is almost no chance that any judge would consider a class-action lawsuit because those are strongly discouraged in China.
More than 100 lawyers across the country put themselves on a list of volunteers willing to give legal advice to anxious parents, but local government officials have put pressure on some not to take on any cases, several lawyers said. At least two dozen have since removed themselves from the list.
"This will move further away from the legal system," Zhang Xinbao, a law professor at People's University of China, said of the milk crisis. "The legal system and mechanism we have can't function in this case. This is what law experts are concerned about."
"This is a product liability case that in a Western country would turn into a class-action lawsuit," Professor Zhang said. In China, he said, "they don't want to see so many people getting involved in one lawsuit. This might threaten social stability."
Qian Weiqing, the head of the Dacheng Law Office in Beijing, said at a legal conference last week that the government, in continually suppressing such lawsuits, had "missed many opportunities to improve the system to deal with these problems, including perfecting the law enforcement system, the judicial system and the relief system."
Government officials have told parents and lawyers in the milk cases that their complaints can be resolved through out-of-court compensation payments.
Local governments in Sichuan Province employed the same strategy with grieving parents whose children died in school collapses during the May 12 earthquake. Over the summer, the officials compensated the parents if they signed individual papers agreeing to drop demands for investigations into shoddy school construction. Most of the parents accepted the money, but many said they were furious that no one had been held responsible for the deaths of their children.
As with the school collapses, the milk scandal involves a web of complicity linking company executives to government officials. Those connections make sorting out responsibility a delicate political task. Rather than allow the courts to weigh in, officials prefer to press complainants to take compensation, said Teng Biao, a lawyer in Beijing who is collecting material for a possible class-action lawsuit. "Traditionally in China, politics is always higher than the law," he said.
"To protect Sanlu is to protect the government itself," he added. "A public health crisis like this not only involves Sanlu. It involves many officials from authorities in the city of Shijiazhuang up to the central government. It involves media censorship, the food quality regulatory system and the corrupt deal between commercial merchants and corrupt officials."
In the milk scandal, judges are trying to decide whether to accept three lawsuits that have been filed separately in the provinces of Gansu, Henan and Guangdong. The Gansu lawsuit is the only one to involve a dead child, Yi's son. Courts in Henan have already rejected two other cases, said Chang Boyang, a volunteer lawyer in Henan representing parents whose 1-year-old son died in early September.
Lawyers in Henan, a poor backward province, have faced more harassment from local officials than lawyers elsewhere. At least 20 of the lawyers who have dropped off the volunteer list are from Henan. On Sept. 27, officials from the province's judicial bureau, which administers the courts and legal licenses, met with lawyers to discourage them from taking the cases.
A working brief issued Oct. 7 by the national volunteer group said the officials had directly told the lawyers not to give any legal aid to the parents.
Chang said the pressure actually took a subtler form. Officials told the lawyers to report to the government if they decided to handle a milk case. The officials also reiterated rules mandating that the lawyers tell the government if they take any cases centered on incidents involving many people or delicate issues.
Li Fangping, a human rights lawyer, said officials from the Beijing lawyers association met with lawyers in the capital last month to discourage them from filing milk lawsuits, especially suits with plaintiffs from multiple provinces. The lawyers were told not to publish working briefs on the Internet. At the time, the volunteer lawyers had already gotten more than 1,200 phone calls from concerned parents.
Many lawyers find it hard to ignore the entreaties of provincial judicial bureaus or lawyers associations, which they are required to join. Those groups are controlled by the Ministry of Justice, which ultimately makes the rules for licensing lawyers.
The All China Lawyers Association, the country's bar association, strongly discourages class-action lawsuits. In March 2006, the association put out a guiding opinion aimed at curbing cases involving 10 or more plaintiffs. There was no outright ban on class-action lawsuits, but the association put in place onerous rules, including a requirement that lawyers report conversations with clients to the judicial bureaus, said Jerome Cohen, a professor of law at New York University who specializes in the Chinese legal system.
On Oct. 10, a group of lawyers, law professors and a judge from the Supreme People's Court held a conference at People's University to discuss the milk scandal's legal issues. The judge, Chen Xianjie, said China's courts had little experience with class-action suits. "If the court accepts the Sanlu case as a collective lawsuit, consumers would end up with no legal protection," he warned.
Judge Chen said it would be better for the parents' complaints to be treated in the traditional manner. The government should handle them as an administrative issue and dole out compensation, he said. It has already agreed to pay medical bills, but has yet to offer more compensation.
Some Chinese have raised questions, though, about whether the government should be using taxpayers' money to compensate for private companies' mistakes.
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Thursday, 16 October 2008
China and Thailand recall more dairy products (IHT)
I have been following the melamine story very closely as it is, for me, the final straw. For a long time my family has cut down to practically zero any processed food for reasons of nutrition, taste and packaging. When we now add in the potential for food security problems, death even, it's time to grow more, shop more at the market and thing very carefully about what you buy if you don't know where it comes from.
China recalls more dairy products
By Edward Wong
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
BEIJING: The Chinese government ordered a recall on Tuesday of all milk products produced before Sept. 14 that are still on the shelves so the products can be tested for the toxic chemical melamine.
Melamine, a substance illicitly added to watered-down milk to artificially give its protein count a boost, has led to the deaths of at least three babies; at least 53,000 other children have fallen ill. Those statistics are weeks old, though, and the government has yet to release updated numbers, which are believed to be much higher.
The government announced limits for allowable traces of melamine last week. If the recalled products meet the new standards, they will be put back on the market, the government said. Dairy products thought to have a real risk of melamine contamination were already recalled weeks ago, right after the milk crisis first emerged. The recall announced Tuesday was an effort by the government to show the public that it was enforcing its new trace melamine limits.
Meanwhile, a lawyer based in Shanghai has filed a lawsuit in the northwestern Gansu Province on behalf of a family whose 6-month-old son, Yi Kaixuan, died in May after drinking tainted baby formula. A handful of lawsuits have been filed on behalf of parents whose children have died or fallen ill from drinking tainted dairy products, but so far no court has accepted a case.
Separately, the Ministry of Health and the State Food and Drug Administration announced last Thursday that the brand of herbal drug suspected of killing three people recently was "tainted with bacteria," Xinhua, the state news agency, reported. The drug, Siberian ginseng or ciwujia, was made by Wandashan Pharmaceutical, based in northeastern China.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
BEIJING: The Chinese government ordered a recall on Tuesday of all milk products produced before Sept. 14 that are still on the shelves so the products can be tested for the toxic chemical melamine.
Melamine, a substance illicitly added to watered-down milk to artificially give its protein count a boost, has led to the deaths of at least three babies; at least 53,000 other children have fallen ill. Those statistics are weeks old, though, and the government has yet to release updated numbers, which are believed to be much higher.
The government announced limits for allowable traces of melamine last week. If the recalled products meet the new standards, they will be put back on the market, the government said. Dairy products thought to have a real risk of melamine contamination were already recalled weeks ago, right after the milk crisis first emerged. The recall announced Tuesday was an effort by the government to show the public that it was enforcing its new trace melamine limits.
Meanwhile, a lawyer based in Shanghai has filed a lawsuit in the northwestern Gansu Province on behalf of a family whose 6-month-old son, Yi Kaixuan, died in May after drinking tainted baby formula. A handful of lawsuits have been filed on behalf of parents whose children have died or fallen ill from drinking tainted dairy products, but so far no court has accepted a case.
Separately, the Ministry of Health and the State Food and Drug Administration announced last Thursday that the brand of herbal drug suspected of killing three people recently was "tainted with bacteria," Xinhua, the state news agency, reported. The drug, Siberian ginseng or ciwujia, was made by Wandashan Pharmaceutical, based in northeastern China.
Melamine found in Thai condensed milk
Reuters
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
BANGKOK: Thailand's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said Wednesday it had found "very high" levels of melamine in a sample of unsweetened condensed milk produced and sold in the country.
The FDA ordered Thai Dairy Industry Co. Ltd. to stop production of "Mali" unsweetened condensed milk and requested retailers pull it from their shelves.
Tests found 92.82 milligrams per kilogram of melamine in a 385 gram can of milk, "which is very high," the agency said in a statement.
Thai Dairy Industry Co. Ltd. is a joint venture between Thai and Malaysian businessmen and the Australian Dairy Corp, according to the company's website, www.thaidairy.co.th.
The FDA said the company had told the agency that the raw materials used to make Mali condensed milk were imported from several countries, including Belgium, Switzerland, Australia, Germany and India.
Thailand is the latest country to find traces of melamine in a widening health scandal after the industrial chemical was found in milk and milk formula in China.
The FDA said it was conducting more tests of Thai Dairy Industry's products and ordered a recall of "the suspected product and others using the same raw material."
Tuesday, Thai restaurant and bakery S&P withdrew a line of milk cookies sold in Thailand after reports that Swiss officials had found traces of melamine in the biscuits.
Thai newspapers reported that Swiss authorities had pulled the S&P milk cookies, as well as other products from China and Sri Lanka, after tests showed they were tainted by melamine.
S&P said it only used milk powder imported from Australia and condensed milk from a Thai milk producer to make its cookies.
Reuters
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
BANGKOK: Thailand's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said Wednesday it had found "very high" levels of melamine in a sample of unsweetened condensed milk produced and sold in the country.
The FDA ordered Thai Dairy Industry Co. Ltd. to stop production of "Mali" unsweetened condensed milk and requested retailers pull it from their shelves.
Tests found 92.82 milligrams per kilogram of melamine in a 385 gram can of milk, "which is very high," the agency said in a statement.
Thai Dairy Industry Co. Ltd. is a joint venture between Thai and Malaysian businessmen and the Australian Dairy Corp, according to the company's website, www.thaidairy.co.th.
The FDA said the company had told the agency that the raw materials used to make Mali condensed milk were imported from several countries, including Belgium, Switzerland, Australia, Germany and India.
Thailand is the latest country to find traces of melamine in a widening health scandal after the industrial chemical was found in milk and milk formula in China.
The FDA said it was conducting more tests of Thai Dairy Industry's products and ordered a recall of "the suspected product and others using the same raw material."
Tuesday, Thai restaurant and bakery S&P withdrew a line of milk cookies sold in Thailand after reports that Swiss officials had found traces of melamine in the biscuits.
Thai newspapers reported that Swiss authorities had pulled the S&P milk cookies, as well as other products from China and Sri Lanka, after tests showed they were tainted by melamine.
S&P said it only used milk powder imported from Australia and condensed milk from a Thai milk producer to make its cookies.
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Wednesday, 15 October 2008
Taiwan says milk powder flap adds fuel to WHO bid (IHT)
Reuters
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
TAIPEI: Taiwan, blocked for more than a decade by Beijing from joining the World Health Organisation or any other U.N. group, said Tuesday China's milk scandal shows the urgency of giving the island membership.
Taiwan has complained to the 193-member WHO three times since the milk powder flap broke out last month about the island's exclusion from the group that updates members on health issues and helps handle disease outbreaks, a Foreign Ministry official told reporters.
"If we were in the United Nations, we could have handled the tainted milk powder problem from the start," ministry spokesman Henry Chen said. "This problem has caused panic among average households.
"Of course it's urgent, just like with SARS in 2003," Chen said, referring to the severe acute respiratory syndrome virus that originated in China and went on to kill hundreds around the world.
China has claimed sovereignty over self-ruled Taiwan since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949. Beijing has vowed to bring the island back under mainland rule, by force if necessary.
Beijing's roughly 170 diplomatic allies block Taiwan's WHO membership bids on grounds that only sovereign nations are allowed to join. Taiwan has only 23 diplomatic partners.
Toxic milk powder in China, where at least four children have died, has prompted Taiwan to ban dairy products from China and pull items from supermarket shelves.
The health minister resigned over the island's handling of the case, and Taiwan has added food safety to the next round of high-level talks with Beijing.
(Reporting by Ralph Jennings; Editing by Nick Macfie)
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China issues blanket recall on dairy (IHT)
The Associated Press
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
BEIJING: China's store shelves are being cleared of all milk and milk powder more than a month old, a huge recall that marks the latest government effort to restore consumer confidence after four babies died from drinking milk tainted with an industrial chemical.
In Hong Kong, authorities announced that another child has developed kidney stones after consuming contaminated products, bringing to eight the number of children in the territory sickened by Chinese dairy products.
All of mainland China's milk powder and liquid milk produced before Sept. 14 was ordered pulled off the shelves to be tested by manufacturers, the official Xinhua news agency said.
"Regardless of the brand or the batch, they must be taken off shelves, their sale must be stopped," Xinhua said, citing a notice issued by six government ministries and administrations.
It was the first time the government has issued a blanket recall of products since the tainted milk scandal began.
The notice said the products would be sold only if they passed quality tests and were labeled as safe. Those that fail checks must be reported to the ministries, recalled and sealed off from consumption, it said. The notice did not say why the recall was being implemented now.
China launched a countrywide inspection of dairy facilities focusing on milk-collecting centers on Sept. 15 - leaving open the possibility that some milk products more than a month old have yet to be scrutinized.
The notice was issued by the chief Chinese quality watchdog, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine in conjunction with five other central government ministries and administrations. Telephones at the General Administration rang unanswered Tuesday and officials did not respond to a faxed request for information.
Four babies died and tens of thousands of children have been sickened by milk spiked with the melamine, a nitrogen-rich chemical used to make plastics and fertilizers.
The scandal prompted the Chinese Health Ministry to issue guidelines limiting acceptable melamine levels in milk and food products. There were no such standards previously.
The State Council, China's Cabinet, has also tightened regulations for the dairy industry, mandating stricter controls over cattle breeding, the purchase of raw milk and the production and sale of dairy products.
Authorities have blamed dairy suppliers for the crisis, saying they added melamine to watered-down milk to fool quality control tests and make the product appear rich in protein.
Melamine can cause kidney stones as the body tries to eliminate it and, in extreme cases, lead to kidney failure.
The crisis has spread overseas with Chinese milk products pulled out of stores in dozens of countries as governments increase vigilance and step up safety tests.
On Tuesday, Hong Kong's government said a 2 ½-year-old boy developed two kidney stones after consuming melamine-laced milk and cookies. He did not show any signs of renal problems or require hospitalization.
Over the past two years, the boy had regularly consumed milk from the Chinese dairy Yili Industrial Group and eaten chocolate-filled Koala cookies made by the snack maker Lotte Group, based in Tokyo with facilities in China, said a government spokesman, Alex Cheng. Samples of Koala cookies in Hong Kong and Yili milk in China have tested positive for melamine.
In Thailand, the bakery chain S&P recalled all its packaged cookies nationwide as a precaution, after Swiss authorities said they found high concentrations of melamine in the products.
Swiss authorities said Monday that tests of the confection found high melamine levels.
Witoon Sila-on, a vice president at S&P Syndicate, said the company had never exported its cookies to Switzerland and questioned where the sample came from. Witoon also said the cookies in question included milk powder imported from Australia - not milk powder from China.
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Tuesday, October 14, 2008
BEIJING: China's store shelves are being cleared of all milk and milk powder more than a month old, a huge recall that marks the latest government effort to restore consumer confidence after four babies died from drinking milk tainted with an industrial chemical.
In Hong Kong, authorities announced that another child has developed kidney stones after consuming contaminated products, bringing to eight the number of children in the territory sickened by Chinese dairy products.
All of mainland China's milk powder and liquid milk produced before Sept. 14 was ordered pulled off the shelves to be tested by manufacturers, the official Xinhua news agency said.
"Regardless of the brand or the batch, they must be taken off shelves, their sale must be stopped," Xinhua said, citing a notice issued by six government ministries and administrations.
It was the first time the government has issued a blanket recall of products since the tainted milk scandal began.
The notice said the products would be sold only if they passed quality tests and were labeled as safe. Those that fail checks must be reported to the ministries, recalled and sealed off from consumption, it said. The notice did not say why the recall was being implemented now.
China launched a countrywide inspection of dairy facilities focusing on milk-collecting centers on Sept. 15 - leaving open the possibility that some milk products more than a month old have yet to be scrutinized.
The notice was issued by the chief Chinese quality watchdog, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine in conjunction with five other central government ministries and administrations. Telephones at the General Administration rang unanswered Tuesday and officials did not respond to a faxed request for information.
Four babies died and tens of thousands of children have been sickened by milk spiked with the melamine, a nitrogen-rich chemical used to make plastics and fertilizers.
The scandal prompted the Chinese Health Ministry to issue guidelines limiting acceptable melamine levels in milk and food products. There were no such standards previously.
The State Council, China's Cabinet, has also tightened regulations for the dairy industry, mandating stricter controls over cattle breeding, the purchase of raw milk and the production and sale of dairy products.
Authorities have blamed dairy suppliers for the crisis, saying they added melamine to watered-down milk to fool quality control tests and make the product appear rich in protein.
Melamine can cause kidney stones as the body tries to eliminate it and, in extreme cases, lead to kidney failure.
The crisis has spread overseas with Chinese milk products pulled out of stores in dozens of countries as governments increase vigilance and step up safety tests.
On Tuesday, Hong Kong's government said a 2 ½-year-old boy developed two kidney stones after consuming melamine-laced milk and cookies. He did not show any signs of renal problems or require hospitalization.
Over the past two years, the boy had regularly consumed milk from the Chinese dairy Yili Industrial Group and eaten chocolate-filled Koala cookies made by the snack maker Lotte Group, based in Tokyo with facilities in China, said a government spokesman, Alex Cheng. Samples of Koala cookies in Hong Kong and Yili milk in China have tested positive for melamine.
In Thailand, the bakery chain S&P recalled all its packaged cookies nationwide as a precaution, after Swiss authorities said they found high concentrations of melamine in the products.
Swiss authorities said Monday that tests of the confection found high melamine levels.
Witoon Sila-on, a vice president at S&P Syndicate, said the company had never exported its cookies to Switzerland and questioned where the sample came from. Witoon also said the cookies in question included milk powder imported from Australia - not milk powder from China.
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Tuesday, 14 October 2008
Swiss find melamine in Thai, Sri Lankan biscuits (IHT)
The Associated Press
Monday, October 13, 2008
GENEVA: Swiss authorities say they have found high concentrations of melamine in biscuits from Thailand and Sri Lanka, and have called on other European countries to withdraw the products.
Authorities in the canton of Geneva say tests have shown high melamine levels in the Thai biscuits, Milk Cookies S&P, and the Sri Lankan candies, LemonPuff Munchee.
Melamine in milk has been blamed for the deaths of four infants and for sickening more than 54,000 others in mainland China.
The authorities said in a statement Monday that the European distribution channels for the two biscuits have been identified.
They say tests on a dozen baby milk products have shown no melamine contamination.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/13/europe/13swissmelaFW.php
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Monday, October 13, 2008
GENEVA: Swiss authorities say they have found high concentrations of melamine in biscuits from Thailand and Sri Lanka, and have called on other European countries to withdraw the products.
Authorities in the canton of Geneva say tests have shown high melamine levels in the Thai biscuits, Milk Cookies S&P, and the Sri Lankan candies, LemonPuff Munchee.
Melamine in milk has been blamed for the deaths of four infants and for sickening more than 54,000 others in mainland China.
The authorities said in a statement Monday that the European distribution channels for the two biscuits have been identified.
They say tests on a dozen baby milk products have shown no melamine contamination.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/13/europe/13swissmelaFW.php
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Monday, 13 October 2008
China sets plan to settle 470,000 Tibetan herders (IHT)
China sets plan to settle 470,000 Tibetan herders
Reuters
Saturday, October 11, 2008
SHANGHAI: Authorities in the Chinese province of Sichuan plan to spend 5 billion yuan (431 million pounds) to settle 470,000 Tibetan herders in permanent houses, state media said, as part of efforts to promote the development of ethnic Tibetan areas.
Rioting broke out in ethnic Tibetan areas of the southwest province earlier this year after Lhasa, the capital of neighbouring Tibet, was hit by violent protests against Chinese rule.
Over the next four years, the Sichuan government will build brick houses and villages including primary schools, clinics and offices for the Tibetan nomads, Xinhua news agency said in a report on Saturday.
Of 533,000 herders in the province, 219,000 have no fixed residences and 254,000 are living in shanty homes, it added.
Provincial authorities also decided at a meeting on Friday to invite companies to design and make special tents and other goods to modernise the living standards of the herders, Xinhua said.
Xinhua did not detail how authorities would choose the locations of the villages or convince herders to move into them. Some ethnic Tibetans claim China has been trying to destroy their way of life as a people.
After a massive security operation to end this year's unrest, during which 21 people were killed in Lhasa, the Chinese government has announced a range of projects to promote the economic development of ethnic Tibetan areas.
Last month, Xinhua said the government would spend $3.1 billion (765 million pounds) by 2013 on a series of industrial schemes in Tibet, including 10 mining projects and five industrial zones.
($1 = 6.83 yuan)
(Reporting by Andrew Torchia; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)
Reuters
Saturday, October 11, 2008
SHANGHAI: Authorities in the Chinese province of Sichuan plan to spend 5 billion yuan (431 million pounds) to settle 470,000 Tibetan herders in permanent houses, state media said, as part of efforts to promote the development of ethnic Tibetan areas.
Rioting broke out in ethnic Tibetan areas of the southwest province earlier this year after Lhasa, the capital of neighbouring Tibet, was hit by violent protests against Chinese rule.
Over the next four years, the Sichuan government will build brick houses and villages including primary schools, clinics and offices for the Tibetan nomads, Xinhua news agency said in a report on Saturday.
Of 533,000 herders in the province, 219,000 have no fixed residences and 254,000 are living in shanty homes, it added.
Provincial authorities also decided at a meeting on Friday to invite companies to design and make special tents and other goods to modernise the living standards of the herders, Xinhua said.
Xinhua did not detail how authorities would choose the locations of the villages or convince herders to move into them. Some ethnic Tibetans claim China has been trying to destroy their way of life as a people.
After a massive security operation to end this year's unrest, during which 21 people were killed in Lhasa, the Chinese government has announced a range of projects to promote the economic development of ethnic Tibetan areas.
Last month, Xinhua said the government would spend $3.1 billion (765 million pounds) by 2013 on a series of industrial schemes in Tibet, including 10 mining projects and five industrial zones.
($1 = 6.83 yuan)
(Reporting by Andrew Torchia; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)
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China may draw farms into market economy (IHT)
China may draw farms into market economy
By Edward Wong
Saturday, October 11, 2008
BEIJING: Chinese leaders are expected to allow peasants to buy or sell land-use rights for the first time, a step that could draw hundreds of millions of farmers more firmly into the city-centered market economy.
The new policy, which is being discussed this weekend by Communist Party leaders and could be announced within days, would be the biggest economic reform in many years and would mark another significant departure from the system of collective ownership and state control that China built after the 1949 revolution.
Party leaders began reviewing a draft of proposed rural land reform laws on Thursday at their annual planning session, now under way. Policy changes are expected to be announced after the session ends on Sunday, scholars and government advisers say.
The most important change would allow China's peasantry, which by official count includes about 800 million people, to sell land-use contracts to other farmers or to agricultural companies. Some economists say this shift would lead to more efficient land use and allow much larger farms to be established.
The Chinese leadership has long insisted that the country must remain self-sufficient in the production of staple foods, and is highly unlikely to allow farmers to sell land-use rights for nonagricultural development. But if a market for trading farmland developed as expected, peasants could gain a new source of cash income that could help revitalize the stagnant rural economy.
"If all the speculations are true, if senior leadership is going to lift all the restrictions out the door, I'd say this is a great positive," said Keliang Zhu, a lawyer with the China research division of the Rural Development Institute, a Seattle-based organization that has pushed for land rights for the rural poor. "It'll free up the dead capital and allow all this wealth to materialize."
Zhu added that the change would give China "huge momentum in terms of agricultural development."
Chinese leaders are alarmed by the prospect of a deep recession in leading export markets at a time when their own economy, after a long streak of double-digit growth, is slowing. Officials are eager to stoke new consumer activity at home, and one potentially enormous but barely tapped source of demand is the peasant population, which has been largely excluded from the raging growth in cities.
Average income in rural areas lags far behind the average in cities, giving China one of the starkest income gaps in the world, according to government estimates.
Many farmers work on tiny, state-allocated plots of land for a small fraction of the year, investing little in agriculture. While they are entitled to 30-year land-use contracts, the state retains ownership of rural land, and local officials often seize or reallocate it to suit their development priorities.
Rural land disputes are perhaps the biggest source of social unrest in China. Protests and riots in rural areas number in the thousands each year, according to national police estimates. They are often incited by allegations of corruption and illegal land seizures.
Many farmers leave the land to seek work in cities, but they are still classified as farmers under the country's population control policies and tend to work in low-wage factory or construction jobs on a seasonal basis.
Advocates for land reform say the proposed changes would create more asset wealth for farmers and increase land security, which would in turn encourage peasants to invest in farming and increase productivity.
A law enacted in 2002 allows limited land-use trades between individual farmers, but does not permit unrestricted trade between farmers and companies, straight sales of land-use rights or the option to use the land as collateral to obtain a loan, Zhu said.
The major state news organizations reported Friday that rural land reform was at the top of the agenda for the plenary session. China Daily, the country's official English-language newspaper, said, "The meeting is expected to make it easier for farmers to lease or transfer the management rights of their land, measures that have become necessary as many farmers move to cities as migrant workers."
Private ownership of land is not allowed under the Constitution, and rural land is still effectively controlled by township- and village-level leaders. Officials characterize the proposed policy changes as allowing the farmers to lease or trade their 30-year land-use contracts to individuals or companies.
The issue remains a delicate one. Many party traditionalists strongly favor collective land ownership. They have argued that China's economy is still not robust enough to absorb hundreds of millions of rural laborers full time. They also defend the system of allocating small plots of land to all rural families as guaranteeing farmers at least a subsistence income.
But repeated efforts to enliven the rural economy without freeing up land have failed, and proponents of moving toward partial privatization appear to have the upper hand.
One point under discussion is whether land contracts should be extended to 70 years from 30 years, scholars say, a move that would give farmers more security and presumably increase the value of their land-use rights.
Chinese leaders have been carefully preparing the public for a major announcement.
On Sept. 30, President Hu Jintao, who is also the secretary general of the Communist Party, made a well-publicized visit to Xiaogang village in Anhui Province, the site in 1978 of a bold experiment in rejecting Maoist-era land collectivization. Since then, the village has been held up as a symbol of rural land reform.
Hu said at the time that farmers would soon be allowed to transfer their land contracts.
"Not only will the current land contract relationship be kept stable and unchanged over time, greater and protected land contract and management rights will be given to the peasants," Hu said, according to Xinhua, the state news agency. "Furthermore, if the peasants wish to, they will be allowed to transfer the land contract and management rights in various ways and to develop management on an appropriate scale."
Some farmers are already informally leasing out their land-use contracts. After Hu's visit to Xiaogang, China Daily reported glowingly that one farmer who took part in the risky experiment in 1978, Yan Jinchang, had recently joined about 10 other households in renting 44 acres of land to a Shanghai company. In 2006, the company built a pig farm on the land.
Yan, 65, was made the pig farm's manager. "We raise special pigs that produce lean pork," Yan said, according to The China Daily. "Our meat sells well in Shanghai, and we are profitable."
From dynastic times onward, control of farmland has always been a central part of the relationship between Chinese rulers and the common people. Rulers are keenly aware of the fact that peasant rebellions related to land use and taxes have overthrown kingdoms throughout Chinese history.
Mao forced farmers into collectives, a move that turned out to be disastrous. In 1978, before the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping officially announced the start of his bold Reform and Open policy, 18 families in Xiaogang, including Yan's, quietly decided to divide up communal farmland for personal use. It was the precursor to the land-use contract system that the government later enacted.
But since then, rural land reform has failed to keep pace with urban land reform, which partly explains while farmers have failed to capitalize on the economic gains of the past few decades. China allows urban residents to trade or sell their land-use contracts freely. That right has allowed people to profit from city property in ways that farmers have not legally been able to do.
There is speculation that Hu has chosen the party's planning session this year to announce the rural reforms in order to link himself in the public eye with Deng, whose initial economic reforms were unveiled 30 years ago this month.
Huang Yuanxi contributed research.
By Edward Wong
Saturday, October 11, 2008
BEIJING: Chinese leaders are expected to allow peasants to buy or sell land-use rights for the first time, a step that could draw hundreds of millions of farmers more firmly into the city-centered market economy.
The new policy, which is being discussed this weekend by Communist Party leaders and could be announced within days, would be the biggest economic reform in many years and would mark another significant departure from the system of collective ownership and state control that China built after the 1949 revolution.
Party leaders began reviewing a draft of proposed rural land reform laws on Thursday at their annual planning session, now under way. Policy changes are expected to be announced after the session ends on Sunday, scholars and government advisers say.
The most important change would allow China's peasantry, which by official count includes about 800 million people, to sell land-use contracts to other farmers or to agricultural companies. Some economists say this shift would lead to more efficient land use and allow much larger farms to be established.
The Chinese leadership has long insisted that the country must remain self-sufficient in the production of staple foods, and is highly unlikely to allow farmers to sell land-use rights for nonagricultural development. But if a market for trading farmland developed as expected, peasants could gain a new source of cash income that could help revitalize the stagnant rural economy.
"If all the speculations are true, if senior leadership is going to lift all the restrictions out the door, I'd say this is a great positive," said Keliang Zhu, a lawyer with the China research division of the Rural Development Institute, a Seattle-based organization that has pushed for land rights for the rural poor. "It'll free up the dead capital and allow all this wealth to materialize."
Zhu added that the change would give China "huge momentum in terms of agricultural development."
Chinese leaders are alarmed by the prospect of a deep recession in leading export markets at a time when their own economy, after a long streak of double-digit growth, is slowing. Officials are eager to stoke new consumer activity at home, and one potentially enormous but barely tapped source of demand is the peasant population, which has been largely excluded from the raging growth in cities.
Average income in rural areas lags far behind the average in cities, giving China one of the starkest income gaps in the world, according to government estimates.
Many farmers work on tiny, state-allocated plots of land for a small fraction of the year, investing little in agriculture. While they are entitled to 30-year land-use contracts, the state retains ownership of rural land, and local officials often seize or reallocate it to suit their development priorities.
Rural land disputes are perhaps the biggest source of social unrest in China. Protests and riots in rural areas number in the thousands each year, according to national police estimates. They are often incited by allegations of corruption and illegal land seizures.
Many farmers leave the land to seek work in cities, but they are still classified as farmers under the country's population control policies and tend to work in low-wage factory or construction jobs on a seasonal basis.
Advocates for land reform say the proposed changes would create more asset wealth for farmers and increase land security, which would in turn encourage peasants to invest in farming and increase productivity.
A law enacted in 2002 allows limited land-use trades between individual farmers, but does not permit unrestricted trade between farmers and companies, straight sales of land-use rights or the option to use the land as collateral to obtain a loan, Zhu said.
The major state news organizations reported Friday that rural land reform was at the top of the agenda for the plenary session. China Daily, the country's official English-language newspaper, said, "The meeting is expected to make it easier for farmers to lease or transfer the management rights of their land, measures that have become necessary as many farmers move to cities as migrant workers."
Private ownership of land is not allowed under the Constitution, and rural land is still effectively controlled by township- and village-level leaders. Officials characterize the proposed policy changes as allowing the farmers to lease or trade their 30-year land-use contracts to individuals or companies.
The issue remains a delicate one. Many party traditionalists strongly favor collective land ownership. They have argued that China's economy is still not robust enough to absorb hundreds of millions of rural laborers full time. They also defend the system of allocating small plots of land to all rural families as guaranteeing farmers at least a subsistence income.
But repeated efforts to enliven the rural economy without freeing up land have failed, and proponents of moving toward partial privatization appear to have the upper hand.
One point under discussion is whether land contracts should be extended to 70 years from 30 years, scholars say, a move that would give farmers more security and presumably increase the value of their land-use rights.
Chinese leaders have been carefully preparing the public for a major announcement.
On Sept. 30, President Hu Jintao, who is also the secretary general of the Communist Party, made a well-publicized visit to Xiaogang village in Anhui Province, the site in 1978 of a bold experiment in rejecting Maoist-era land collectivization. Since then, the village has been held up as a symbol of rural land reform.
Hu said at the time that farmers would soon be allowed to transfer their land contracts.
"Not only will the current land contract relationship be kept stable and unchanged over time, greater and protected land contract and management rights will be given to the peasants," Hu said, according to Xinhua, the state news agency. "Furthermore, if the peasants wish to, they will be allowed to transfer the land contract and management rights in various ways and to develop management on an appropriate scale."
Some farmers are already informally leasing out their land-use contracts. After Hu's visit to Xiaogang, China Daily reported glowingly that one farmer who took part in the risky experiment in 1978, Yan Jinchang, had recently joined about 10 other households in renting 44 acres of land to a Shanghai company. In 2006, the company built a pig farm on the land.
Yan, 65, was made the pig farm's manager. "We raise special pigs that produce lean pork," Yan said, according to The China Daily. "Our meat sells well in Shanghai, and we are profitable."
From dynastic times onward, control of farmland has always been a central part of the relationship between Chinese rulers and the common people. Rulers are keenly aware of the fact that peasant rebellions related to land use and taxes have overthrown kingdoms throughout Chinese history.
Mao forced farmers into collectives, a move that turned out to be disastrous. In 1978, before the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping officially announced the start of his bold Reform and Open policy, 18 families in Xiaogang, including Yan's, quietly decided to divide up communal farmland for personal use. It was the precursor to the land-use contract system that the government later enacted.
But since then, rural land reform has failed to keep pace with urban land reform, which partly explains while farmers have failed to capitalize on the economic gains of the past few decades. China allows urban residents to trade or sell their land-use contracts freely. That right has allowed people to profit from city property in ways that farmers have not legally been able to do.
There is speculation that Hu has chosen the party's planning session this year to announce the rural reforms in order to link himself in the public eye with Deng, whose initial economic reforms were unveiled 30 years ago this month.
Huang Yuanxi contributed research.
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Monday, 6 October 2008
China says new milk tests show clean (IHT)
Reuters
Sunday, October 5, 2008
BEIJING: China, mired in a health scandal over contaminated dairy products at home and abroad, said new tests had revealed no melamine in liquid milk on the home market.
It was the second time in days China has tried to repair confidence in its dairy products, saying also on Thursday the latest chemical tests had come back clean.
China's quality supervision authority had sent more than 5,000 inspectors to carry out "round-the-clock scrutiny" at dairy factories to restore consumer confidence, Xinhua news agency said on Sunday.
Thousands of children in China have fallen ill and four have died after drinking melamine-laced milk. The dairy scare, China's latest in a long line of food safety problems, also prompted mounting recalls and warnings abroad.
Samples of 609 batches of liquid, as opposed to powdered, milk from 27 cities across China were found free of melamine, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) announced.
The test was the sixth in China after the tainted milk powder scandal erupted last month. A total of 2,093 batches of liquid milk under 115 brands, among other dairy products, had been checked since then, Xinhua news agency said, citing the AQSIQ.
There was no clean bill of health, though, for powdered milk. The food safety watchdog said on Wednesday that 31 more batches had tested positive for melamine, which has been added to cheat nutrition tests.
The Ministry of Agriculture said Saturday it had developed an emergency rescue plan with the Ministry of Finance to give special subsidies to dairy farmers who have suffered from shrinking demand.
AQSIQ director Wang Yong told Xinhua that the government would "strive to ensure" all dairy products were melamine-free.
"Food safety concerns not only the health of the public, but also the life of business," Wang was quoted as saying.
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Sunday, 5 October 2008
Tainted milk from China turning up worldwide (IHT)
The Associated Press
Friday, October 3, 2008
Russian food inspectors have found nearly two tons of Chinese dry milk believed to be contaminated with melamine, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported Friday, the same day that the list of tainted products grew in other nations as well.
ITAR-Tass quoted Russia's chief epidemiologist, Gennady Onishchenko, as saying that the milk was seized in the eastern city of Khabarovsk, on the Chinese border.
The Vietnamese Health Ministry has discovered the industrial chemical in 18 food products imported from China and three other countries, and has ordered them recalled and destroyed, officials said Friday.
And health officials in the Philippines found melamine in 2 of 30 milk products from China tested for the chemical. The Philippine government had halted imports and sales of Chinese milk products pending inspections last week.
Australian food regulators recalled Chinese-made Kirin Milk Tea after tests found that the drink contained melamine. It is the fourth product withdrawn from the country's stores as a result of the tainted-milk scandal.
Milk containing melamine has been blamed for killing four babies and sickening more than 54,000 with kidney stones and other illnesses in China. The contamination has sparked global concerns about food products made with Chinese milk or milk powder and recalls in several countries of Chinese-made products.
The Chinese authorities believe suppliers trying to bolster output diluted their milk, adding melamine because its nitrogen content can fool tests aimed at verifying protein content.
The tainted food has also spread to the United States, where melamine has been found in Chinese-made White Rabbit Creamy Candy sold in California and Connecticut.
The Food and Drug Administration said Friday that trace amounts of melamine are safe in most foods, except for baby formula. A safety assessment by the agency concluded that 2.5 parts per million - a tiny amount - does not raise concerns. A week ago, the FDA warned consumers not to consume White Rabbit Candy and Mr. Brown coffee products because of possible melamine contamination.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/03/asia/china.php
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Friday, October 3, 2008
Russian food inspectors have found nearly two tons of Chinese dry milk believed to be contaminated with melamine, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported Friday, the same day that the list of tainted products grew in other nations as well.
ITAR-Tass quoted Russia's chief epidemiologist, Gennady Onishchenko, as saying that the milk was seized in the eastern city of Khabarovsk, on the Chinese border.
The Vietnamese Health Ministry has discovered the industrial chemical in 18 food products imported from China and three other countries, and has ordered them recalled and destroyed, officials said Friday.
And health officials in the Philippines found melamine in 2 of 30 milk products from China tested for the chemical. The Philippine government had halted imports and sales of Chinese milk products pending inspections last week.
Australian food regulators recalled Chinese-made Kirin Milk Tea after tests found that the drink contained melamine. It is the fourth product withdrawn from the country's stores as a result of the tainted-milk scandal.
Milk containing melamine has been blamed for killing four babies and sickening more than 54,000 with kidney stones and other illnesses in China. The contamination has sparked global concerns about food products made with Chinese milk or milk powder and recalls in several countries of Chinese-made products.
The Chinese authorities believe suppliers trying to bolster output diluted their milk, adding melamine because its nitrogen content can fool tests aimed at verifying protein content.
The tainted food has also spread to the United States, where melamine has been found in Chinese-made White Rabbit Creamy Candy sold in California and Connecticut.
The Food and Drug Administration said Friday that trace amounts of melamine are safe in most foods, except for baby formula. A safety assessment by the agency concluded that 2.5 parts per million - a tiny amount - does not raise concerns. A week ago, the FDA warned consumers not to consume White Rabbit Candy and Mr. Brown coffee products because of possible melamine contamination.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/03/asia/china.php
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