China reported on Monday the death of a second infant from tainted milk powder in a growing scandal that prompted an official product recall only after the New Zealand government intervened.
Two traders were arrested for selling up to three tonnes of contaminated milk a day, police reported on Monday.
The latest death blamed on infant milk powder made by the Sanlu Group was in Gansu province, a poor region in the north-west where the first infant fatality linked to chemical-laced milk was reported, the official Xinhua news agency said.
The report did not give details about the death. The first was reported at the weekend. China has recorded nearly 500 babies made ill by the tainted milk powder, including 102 in Gansu.
Milk powder producer Sanlu, 43% owned by New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra, last week halted production after investigators found the chemical compound melamine in its powder was causing kidney stones and complications in infants.
The scandal threatens to again tarnish the nation’s troubled product safety record soon after the success of the Beijing Olympics and following a string of scares last year.
”Demand for milk products has been growing in China, but China lacks the safety capacity of developed countries,” said Mao Shoulong, a public policy expert at Renmin University in Beijing, who studies product safety.
”Until safety measures catch up with the scale of the market, we can expect problems like this for a vulnerable product such as milk powder.”
China is the world’s second biggest market for baby milk powder.
Two brothers surnamed Geng were arrested for ”producing and selling toxic and hazardous food”, police in Hebei, the north Chinese province where Sanlu is based, told Xinhua on Monday.
From late last year they added melamine to the three tonnes of milk they sold on from farmers every day, the report said.
”Geng did so because he suffered losses after milk from his station had been rejected several times by Sanlu Group,” it said.
Farmers or dealers may have diluted milk with water and added melamine, used in plastics, to make the milk’s protein level appear higher than it really was.
‘Put a towel over it’
Local Chinese officials acted only after the New Zealand government contacted Beijing, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said on Monday.
”They [Fonterra] have been trying for weeks to get official recall and the local authorities in China would not do it,” Clark told TVNZ. ”I think the first inclination was to try and put a towel over it and deal with it without an official recall.”
Chinese media reported on September 10 that babies had fallen ill after drinking the formula, and the next day Sanlu issued a recall of products made before August 6.
Fonterra chief executive Andrew Ferrier said Sanlu started its own recall from suppliers from August 2, but while it wanted speedy steps it had to heed government rules.
”Sanlu had no choice but to follow the guidelines that they were provided,” Ferrier told reporters via a video conference link from Singapore.
The Beijing Olympic Games opened on August 8 to international acclaim.
Ferrier defended Fonterra’s decision not to go public earlier about what he called a ”huge tragedy”, saying it ”would have been irresponsible without all the facts to just go public”.
Sanlu began receiving customer complaints in March that babies’ urine was discoloured and some had been admitted to hospital, Chinese officials have said.
Taiwan said late on Sunday it was banning all imports of Sanlu dairy products immediately.
Many of the stricken Chinese babies are from remote rural areas — not the first time poorer families have been struck by toxic infant milk powder in China.
In 2004, at least 13 babies died in the eastern province of Anhui after drinking fake milk powder that had no nutrition.
Melamine was linked to the deaths and illness of thousands of cats and dogs in the United States last year after it was added to pet food components exported from China. Normally inert, it can trigger the formation of kidney stones.
Kidney stones are small masses formed when salts or minerals found in urine crystallise. If they become large enough, they can move out of the kidney and cause infection. – Reuters