Dim Sums: Agricultural Markets in China

Cartoon that appeared with a news report. The bottle reads "melamine milk powder" Law enforcement officials in the Nan'an District of Chongqing announced that a 38-year-old feed trader named Tang has been arrested for allegedly selling milk powder that contained melamine that far exceeded the legal limit. According to the report in the Chongqing Evening News , for the last 2 years Mr. Tang had been engaged in procuring milk powder from various places such as Guangdong and Zhejiang to sell to feed mills in Chongqing and Chengdu. The report says the business started in August 2009, when Tang went to a county near Shijiazhuang in Hebei Province to purchase milk powder. He spent 14,000 yuan buying up 6.75 metric tons of milk powder on that first deal, planning to sell most of it in Chongqing and some in Chengdu. Tang allegedly struck up a business relaionship with a counterpart named Zhang in Chongqing in 2009, doing 5 or 6 deals over the last two years. Zhang would receive t...

In the latest scandal to rock China's dairy industry, 3 children in Gansu Province were fatally poisoned by milk adulterated with nitrite, a chemical often used in curing meat. 75 people, mostly children, were hospitalized. This comes immediately after a massive inspection of dairy companies closed nearly half of them . After chronic problems with melamine adulteration, "leather milk", and other problems, last November the government announced that all dairy companies would have to be inspected to have their production licenses renewed. The inspections were originally to be completed by the end of 2010, but it was extended to March 31. Provincial technical supervision bureaus inspected dairy companies to make sure they have an acceptable factory layout and equipment that can test for 64 different substances, including melamine. Of China's 1,176 dairy companies, 426 have been shut down and 107 must stop production until they can meet the standards. In Zhejiang, 19 com...

Below is a translation of " A letter to dairy farmers nationwide " issued by the Ministry of Agriculture Press Office. The context: starting in September 2008 the melamine crisis rocked the industry. The Ministry of Agriculture worked hard to deal with the crisis. Just when things seemed to be back to normal, the melamine crisis reappeared in the last two months, as several companies were caught selling melamine-tainted milk powder that should have been destroyed. Dairy farmers themselves were not directly implicated in the melamine problem, but they probably played a role. The rectification policies require farmers to use "modern" techniques, etc. This letter is an interesting example of Confucianism in China's current government/party. It reassures farmers that their leaders are doing all they can to help them while appealing to the farmers' sense of duty to follow the rules so everyone will benefit. The dairy industry is an example of how the central auth...

Police in Shaanxi Province have announced the results of their investigation of how some melamine-tainted milk powder spread across the country last year. They have jailed three suspects (a fourth had a heart attack) and claim to have destroyed the powder that they tracked down. Some powder was sold to consumers in Shaanxi in 2008 and some candy made last year with tainted powder in southern China has been recalled. The Public Security Bureau of Shaanxi Province held a press conference in Weinan, a northwestern region of China, to announce the results of the investigation (and reassure the public). They laid out a complex trail of purchases and sales that originated in Weinan, led to candy factories in southern China and ultimately to stores in northeastern provinces. The chain of events started with 30 tons of milk powder produced by the Lihua dairy company in Dali county between April and August 2008. -They sold 20 tons to an individual named Ma Shuanglin. Authorities found that Lihu...

The Ministry of Agriculture press office reports that tests of 600 batches of milk from 300 collection stations sampled from 5 provinces found no melamine. Compliance was 100%. No starch was found either. According to the Ministry, the overall milk quality and safety situation now is good.

According to the Economic Observer newspaper, Chinese residents desperate for safe milk powder after the melamine adulteration incident are importing foreign milk powder through the mail. The postal bureau in Suzhou reported that it processed 65 shipments amounting to over 750 kg. of milk powder during October 1-15. Meanwhile, the Harbin Daily boasts (with no apologies or concerns) that Heilongjiang Province has been pumping out record-setting exports of milk powder. Heilongjiang Province exported 30,000 metric tons of milk powder during the first 9 months of 2008, a 40% increase from last year. That was 51.5% of the whole country's exports. Major markets for the stuff were Venezuela (joke's on you Comrade Chavez), Africa, Taiwan and Hong Kong. In other Chinese dairy news, third quarter financial reports for major dairy companies were grim. Sales were down and losses of several hundred million yuan were reported for major companies. The exception was Beijing Sanyuan whose milk ...

Color is one of the chief attributes Chinese consumers look for when buying meat and fish. But an article on the China animal husbandry bureau web site, " What kind of Meat is unwanted by 10 million buyers ?" warns that buying meat based on its color could be a losing proposition. The reporter frequently hears shoppers in the market uttering phrases like, “This chicken foot is very yellow; I’ll buy this one,” or “The pork here is very red; this kind is good.” Some consumers will not buy chicken feet unless they are a yellow color. They also prefer red pork. A bright color connotes the all-important "freshness" or a new unusual food item--both popular attributes with Chinese shoppers. The reporter notes that not long ago there was a type of fish with yellow bones called a “strange banana fish” in a market in Shunde. An individual with a Chinese feed company told the reporter that this is a mistake. If you eat very yellow chicken feet or red pork, they were mostly li...

Illnesses due to tainted milk powder now exceed 6,000 and 3 deaths. Powder from the biggest dairy companies in China have all tested positive for adulteration with melamine. Test results showed melamine present in samples of 69 products from 22 brands of milk powder tested, 14% of the products and 20% of the brands tested. There were 87 brands that were free of melamine in the tests. According to the State Council , there are 175 milk powder producers nationwide, of which 66 have stopped production. The 69 products that tested positive are not allowed to leave the factory. All 11 Sanlu brand samples tested positive with far higher concentration of melamine than any other brand. The two biggest companies were not free of melamine but were not among the worst performers: Yili had 1 out of 38 samples test positive and Mengniu had 3 out of 28 positive. Sanlu's concentration of 2563 mg/kg was much higher than 68.2 mg/kg for Mengniu and 12 mg/kg for Yili. The vice-secretary and mayor of ...

Over 1,250 (so far, the number keeps rising day by day) babies have become sick and two have died from consuming infant formula adulterated with melamine—a chemical derived from coal. This scandal combines elements from two of China’s biggest food safety incidents. You’ll recall that the big publicity about food safety problems with Chinese food imports started in 2007 when dog and cat deaths were linked to melamine. China’s watershed domestic food safety incident came in 2004 when a series of babies died from malnutrition due to fake infant formula that had little nutritive value. The latest problem is centered in Gansu Province in western China where babies had been showing up at hospitals with kidney stone problems since March or April of this year. The link among the cases was that all the babies consumed the same brand of milk powder. According to the Chinese Xinhua article of Sept 11 , the condition found in the babies is usually the result of poor nutrition typically found only ...