China suffering from huge lack of ethics (Melamine scandal)

China is suffering from a huge lack of ethics. Melamine in pet food and now melamine in infant forumla?? Its just ridiculous.

taipeitimes.com/News/editori … 2003423164

[quote=“tommy525”]China is suffering from a huge lack of ethics. Melamine in pet food and now melamine in infant forumla?? Its just ridiculous.

taipeitimes.com/News/editori … 2003423164[/quote]

If I recall, about five years ago there was another, even worse problem of infant formula on the market that was starving babies to death because I did not have enough nutrition. Many poor parents were using it because it was so much cheaper than other products.

Kidney stones are very, very painful. The people who made this product and knew of the contamination but watited to see if anyone got sick before fessing up are indefensable. Those who sold the formula with out sufficient nutrition–MIGHT–have been too ignorent to realize that their formula was going to hurt the children. They said they were, at least, and had good intentions of marketing a product that poor parents could afford. I doubt they were so innocent.

To me, stories like this should be making pregnant choose to nurse their children! How awful I would feel knowing I had given my baby something that hurt him/her.

the people that added melamine to diluted milk to increase the protein content are either extremely stupid (adding industrial chemicals to food) or extremely evil.

I think China will execute some people for this transgression. They definitely need better education about food safety and the whole country needs to be more ethical. They wont be by choice so effective policing is the only answer. And execution for transgressions is certainly a deterent.

[quote=“tommy525”]the people that added melamine to diluted milk to increase the protein content are either extremely stupid (adding industrial chemicals to food) or extremely evil.

I think China will execute some people for this transgression. They definitely need better education about food safety and the whole country needs to be more ethical. They wont be by choice so effective policing is the only answer. And execution for transgressions is certainly a deterent.[/quote]

Isn’t there some saying or something about the great wall being so successful that it was only ever breached three times–all three times by bribing the guard?

Execution will not work. Execution makes the case that life is cheap to the leadership. [I’M NOT ARGUING THAT THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS DESERVE ANYTHING LESS] This type of negative reinforcement will not work.

A change in leadership–a genuine change–that supports a system that the people can all buy into might eventually work. So far, the Chinese producers just see a huge market and a chance to make a pile of cash almost overnight. The fact that Chinese goods are so cheap overseas drives the market so hard that natural correctors take longer to kick in.

Eventually, parents overseas, and parents at home, as well as other consumers, will start to shun Chinese goods because they’ve learned that they are so low quality as to be unsafe.

In a market without endless cheap labor, business learn that the way to keep earning is not to snatch as much cash as possible all at once, but to earn loyal customers with good quality and services and reasonable prices.

If this does not happen and there is no lessening of demand for these ultra cheap goods, then these things will continue to happen.

Its worrisome that some of this stuff has found its way to TAiwan and has been made into processed foods !!

I hope we track down every bit of this stuff before anyone gets hurt

I think countries should just ban all imports of foods, medicines, drinks and cosmetics and their ingredients from China until they can go five years without another incident. Maybe that’ll learn 'em.

Guys, the Department of Health has been making raids and inspections in the middle of the typhoon. They have confiscated a lot of the stuff, some entered legally, but mostly they are comcerned about the illegal.

The milk has already been processed into Papaya Milk and Canned Coffee -the kind they sell in cheap vending machines, I recognized the coffee brand from my MTC days.

Some of the milk was sold to bakeries in Xizhi -thankfully, they were closed due to the typhoon.

One of the distributors said there are still 70% of the product unnaccounted for.

Pisses me off, really. Read about why they use melamine. I remember in Quanzhou, I loved the milk, it was tasty and fresh. For a few more bucks…

By the way, this brand, Sanlu, was also a big seller in China because it was the cheapest…

EDIT:
According to AFP, Taiwan was the only country the milk was exported to, “for processing”. Lucky us…

i like how the word “suffering” is used…as if anyone in china actually cares and would use such a word

[quote=“tommy525”]Its worrisome that some of this stuff has found its way to Taiwan and has been made into processed foods !!

I hope we track down every bit of this stuff before anyone gets hurt[/quote]

The cheapskates food manufacturers who buy this crap and lax Taiwanese regulation is almost as bad.

News reports have it that 2 brothers in Heibei have been arrested for tainting their milk collections with melamine.

Sanlu is 43% owned by a New Zealand Company Fonterra, so now the Kiwi gov’t and the PRC gov’t are pointing fingers at each other.

The only way to stop these type of things from happening is stronger government regulation in the PRC food supply…Authoritarian, from the top, large fines, and executions, etc. to illustrate to Kiwi investors that they cannot do whatever they wish in the PRC.

somewhere a very large pack of previously flightless birds are winging their way to NYC to dump on you, AC.

be careful where you sit: avoid the windows, and walking outside should be a no-no for a while. those kiwis have long beaks.

what a disgusting slight that was.

Why would China suffer because of a lack of ethics? I mean it’s not like they had ethics and lost them.

HG

Probably a lot of truth in that statement HGC.

I would think that probably in this case some idiot heard from another idiot that diluting the milk with water and then adding some melamine (which all the idiots thought were safe) would save them a few percent in costs and thus result in a few percent more profit, which they could skim off the top. One dairy farmer heard this from another and then everyone was doing it.

Lack of knowledge added to lack of basic morality leads to such a mess.

It wasnt Sanlu that was doing it, it seems. The milk came tainted from the dairy suppliers.

And of course lack of proper govt supervision of the food processing industry.

The good thing is that no doubt China will pay better attention to just this very thing and a few heads a rollin will give the dairy farmers cause for reflection on future actions.

A 2nd baby has reportedly died from the milk issue.

I suspect a speedy trail from those arrested. Life in prison or execution will probably be the verdict now.

The question is when is the PRC going to have a large enough government body monitoring the food supply to prevent future out breaks of contaminated food reaching the global food supply.

Fonterra is not entirely off the hook either. Sanlu needs to test high levels of melanmin additives in their supply chain, whether or not a PRC agency requires them to do so or not. So Fonterra should have their consumers in mind and not the bottom line, as foreign investors in Sanlu.

According to the Department of Health, all the tainted milk introduced to Taiwan has been accounted for. However, it seems a part has already been consumed, especially the one sold to bakeries.

I was going to paste the bakeries list, but really, since the stuff has been around since June, it is a bit late, and it’s been used already, what’s the point? Anyway, since the percentages used are supposedly not that dangerous… Since the names were published yesterday, nobody buys from the bakeries and they are protesting to the DOH. Lose-lose situation. Next time, there will be more secrecy -and yes, there will be a next time. With climbing costs in Taiwan and further opening up to the Other Side, we will have to check and recheck everything we buy.

Now politicians are milking this issue -pardon the pun- for the big questions: why was Taiwan the only country this milk was exported to? Why didn’t the DOH notice the problem faster? The greens demand an apology, and remark how troublesome it is to face this issue alone without the WHO’s supoport since it is considered an “internal affair” while Ma only asks the Other Side to be more careful next time…

Sigh

China probably noticed the problem early, suppressed the news to avoid any negative publicity during the Olympics, and didn’t allow ‘exports’.

I found this article in the Telegraph

telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.j … air106.xml

Being the Telegraph the headline is “British sense of fairplay proven by science”, which is hopefully tongue in cheek.But the study they link to is very interesting :

[quote]The research published today in the journal Science shows that taking revenge is more common in relatively corrupt and undemocratic traditional societies based on authoritarian and parochial social institutions, where citizens think it is acceptable to dodge taxes or flout laws because criminal acts frequently go unpunished.

The international study looked at the extent to which some people will sacrifice personal gain to benefit the wider public, while ‘freeloaders’ try to take advantage of their generosity.

In earlier work, scientists devised a financial game in which participants had to decide whether to commit their resources - tokens - to a common pot or hold back and reap the benefits of the others’ community spirit.

Without a financial punishment for those who did not make public-spirited investments, but continued to exploit the generous nature of others, co-operation rapidly foundered.

Based on this game, Prof Simon Gaechter and Dr Benedikt Herrmann at The University of Nottingham, and Dr Christian Thoni at the University of St Gallen, Switzerland, studied the behaviour of people in 16 cities around the world, from Boston and Bonn to Riyadh, Minsk, Nottingham, Seoul and others.

Prof Gaechter says: “To our knowledge this is the largest cross-cultural study of experimental games that has been carried out in the developed world.”

Levels of co-operation were remarkably similar across all 16 cities, they report.

However, against the predictions of economists, behaviour changed dramatically when everyone’s contributions were revealed - and players were given the ability to punish other player by taking tokens away.

As previous studies have shown, players were willing to part with a token of their own in order to punish the low investors or the freeloaders who had exploited others.

But striking national differences then arose when freeloaders were punished for putting their own interests ahead of the common good.

In countries such as the US, Switzerland and the UK, the freeloaders accepted their punishment, became much more co-operative and the earnings in the game increased over time.

However, in countries such as Greece and Russia, the freeloaders sought retribution - exerting revenge on those who had punished them - even the model citizens who had paid their way. Co-operation for the common good then plummeted as a result.[/quote]
It’s an excellent result. Essentially in some societies people will accept criticism for amoral behaviour and change. In other societies they will just retaliate for any punishment. This is a profound thing - the good societies where openness increases cooperation are good because everyone believes in a system of right and wrong. The bad ones are bad because they don’t, they think that since everyone breaks the law, there is no longer any reason not to do so. Those societies are bad because no one believes in morality.

Given that it was the Kiwi investors who complained to Sanlu and urged a recall six weeks earlier, it’s asinine to point fingers at the Kiwi investors for causing this mess. :unamused:

No ac is right. The problems in China are all due to sabotage by Kiwis. They must be hunted down and dealt with

:laughing: An oldie but a goodie.