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Posted on 09/22/2008 1:35:09 AM PDT by Schnucki
Nearly 53,000 children in China have become sick from milk powder contaminated by an industrial chemical, the government has said.
A total of 52,857 children had been brought to hospitals after falling ill, a Health Ministry spokesman said. Most had "basically recovered" but 12,892 of them remained hospitalised, he added.
The ministry said the toll of children ill from milk powder contaminated with the industrial chemical melamine had risen dramatically from the previous figure of 6,244.
A further 39,965 children had "received clinical treatment and advice" before being sent home.
More than 80 per cent of the sick were aged under two. So far, four deaths have been blamed on the toxic milk powder, which causes kidney stones and other complications. Another 104 children are in a serious condition.
Wen Jiabao, the Chinese Premier, visited hospitals in the capital of Beijing in an attempt to show the public that his government was taking action following the incident, which has once more shaken trust in Chinese products. Last year saw several scares over toxic and shoddy goods.
"The public is worried, doctors are worried, and we're also worried," Wen told parents and staff, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.
"The most crucial point is that after a clean-up there can be no problems at all with newly produced milk products. If there are fresh problems, they must be even more sternly punished under the law."
China's food quality watchdog has said it found melamine in nearly 10 percent of milk and drinking yoghurt samples from three major dairy companies: Mengniu Dairy Co, the Inner Mongolia Yili Industrial Group and the Bright group.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Melamine in pet food may not be accidental
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/2007-04-19-pet-food-usat_N.htm
First they tested it on the dogs
“we’re also worried” Wen told parents and staff.....
Yeah, worried that they got caught by the international community in the act of thinning their population.
Thread on the ping I sent you,,,
-ccm
Are the Chinese conducting experiments on their own people? Last year pet food and now baby formula, nest year maybe the elderly. Bird flu was getting out of hand in China just a couple of years ago (at least that’s what the Chinese officials were saying). Could the Chinese be gearing up for a chemical type war without actually setting foot in the U.S.?
I’m getting a little paranoid this a.m.
Prayers for these little ones, how terrible.
You’re paranoid, this is just greed run-amok.
>>>First they tested it on the dogs
Greed is a more direct explanation then conspiracy theories. China is going through the same economic evolution you’d see by reviewing the development of British and American capitalism, or simply by reading Dickens and Sinclair Lewis. China dove head-first into its Robber Baron stage and is still in the deep end of the pool.
Such an era seems to be necessary in the quick development of an agrarian society into a prosperous capitalist culture, but its rough on the people in the meantime. It took the US several generations to get past the worst of this, and China still has a long way to go.
The thing to remember is that a land of peasants is a lot easier to control then a land of industrial workers/consumers. Over time incidents like this will force onto China such things as unions with meaningful rights, FDA type agencies, and the like.
The process is slow, bloody, and not a straight line. But that China is following the general pattern Teddy Roosevelt would have recognized is a very hopeful sign.
The people in power in China resist democracy because they want to stay in power. Power=Money. They will never give in willingly. They will have to have a revolution or lose a war with America. Britain, America, and France became democracies through revolutions; Germany, Japan, Iraq, Afghanistan by losing to us. Russia is an example of a country that wasn't completely defeated by us. We left them at the tipping point and they tilted back toward tyrany.
Even the Chinese government think that form of execution is a bit cruel. They've now got special vehicles built on a bus chassis that do that, of all things! 
But seriously, the major Chinese-language newspapers in Hong Kong have been railing about this for weeks, calling it one of the biggest scandals in Chinese history.
"Got milk, comrade?"
Those who think it's nearly impossible will find it worthwhile in spite of the difficulty to buy products made in the USA or at least made in countries favorably disposed to democratic rule and fairness.
Regards . . . Penny
I have friends going to China to adopt a little girl next month. Very worrisome.
There can be no doubt that China can’t be trusted to produce anything correctly and honestly.
Aside from the myriad of food, health, foodstuff components we read about, they shortcut mechanical items regularly.
They are not only ‘screwing’ us with their inferior, adulterated products but their own people too.
I’m doing my best to avoid Chinese products, an impossible task unfortunately.
“Melamine in pet food may not be accidental”
May not? It was NEVER accidental!
This was a case of deliberately adulterating products to get higher profits. It was not accidental contamination.
Really? Do you think that communists care about the health or quality of life of their own people?
Why did this happen? My guess is bad information, government price controls and maybe greed. The government's price controls have to huge losses among oil refiners. But then again, oil refiners have built up huge cash reserves - they can lose money for several years and keep going. Dairy farms are probably like other kinds of farms - capital intensive and low margin. They have no cash cushion to tide them through rough times. I suspect price controls might have brought these farms to the point of ruin. Upon which, rather than liquidate for a song, they decided to water down the milk and add melamine to stay afloat.
Remember the pet food fiasco? We heard that pets might suffer negative effects from melamine additives, but cows did not and humans probably wouldn't. We just had live human testing conducted in China on a nationwide scale. Now we know for a fact that melamine is not only a non-essential part of the human diet, it is a poison. However, I suspect none of them knew this before adding the melamine. And I don't credit their altruism. The addition of poison to consumables is not one of those things you can hide forever, as consumers start turning up in hospitals.
Whay do you base this ridiculous speculation on? These are mass murderers!
" So Bonnie and Clyse were desperate, and rather than go under, they began robbing banks to stay afloat, only killing when absolutely necessary...."
One thing that seems odd to me is that the distribution of melamine must be very widespread. I would think that in this country it would raise some red flags if a lot of farmers started purchasing a chemical used in manufacturing plastic. So if farmers all over China are using melamine there has to be a production and distribution system for it and a lot of people must be looking the other way.
We're all speculating about motive. You have your guesses; I have mine. Fact 1: the Chinese food industry has been under a lot of pressure from price controls. The dairy industry has been one of the sectors affected. Fact 2: higher material and labor costs combined with intense competition have made a lot of Chinese firms marginally profitable, at best. Fact 3: a lot of Chinese food producers have shut down because they simply cannot survive in the face of price controls on the products they sell, but not the raw materials they use. Fact 4: no one knew anything about what melamine does to the human body - these dairy farms just subjected China to the first (unauthorized) live human trials.
The bottom line - they were reckless, but had no idea this would lead to actual poisonings. I expect they thought it was the equivalent of adding really fine sawdust to food - something that would simply pass through the human digestive system without any negative effects.
The difference with Bonnie and Clyde is this - everybody knows that if you ventilate someone with a Tommy gun, he's probably gonna die. Nobody knew, until now, what adding melamine to milk would do to a human being. Bonnie and Clyde were guilty of murder. The dairy farms are guilty of fraud and at worst, negligent homicide.
It's odd if you think of the way American corporations are organized - there's usually some kind of specialization. The problem with this line of thought is that a significant number of Chinese companies are just pools of capital with no real commonality. There are industrial companies that are also real estate developers. State owned companies do all kinds of things that have no real relationship to one another. Provinces and cities have slush funds that they use to invest in residential and commercial real estate ventures.
How could they even think that after melamine killed so many pets? My neighbors live in Shanghai for most of the year and brought their daughter back for immunizations in the U.S. They don't trust anything Chinese. Pretty tough considering the mom is native Chinese.
Don't hold your breath. They have to get rid of the evidence first.
Sorry, this argument holds no water in light of the pet poisonings with melanine last year. These are murderin' dogs.
Humans and animals don't have the same reactions to the same substances. This is why cattle can survive by eating grass, whereas humans can't. Cattle, unlike dogs and cats, don't have any problem with being fed grain laced with melamine. I think this was their mistake - the thinking might have been - if cows can take it, surely other animals can. They were wrong.
Humans and animals don't have the same reactions to the same substances. This is why cattle can survive by eating grass, whereas humans can't. Grapes and macadamia nuts are poisonous to dogs, but not humans. Cattle, unlike dogs and cats, don't have any problem with being fed grain laced with melamine. I think their mistake was the same as yours, but in a different direction - the thinking might have been - if cattle can safely consume melamine, surely other animals (and humans) can. They were wrong. Never assume malice as an explanation when some combination of simple laziness, negligence, ignorance and/or stupidity will suffice.
And if it's your pet cow fine, but that poison is then spread to humans via the steak. BTW, where did you get the info that cattle are fine with it?
I'm not an attorney, but I do kow that intent has a lot to do with punishment, a lot more than I personally think it should. The guy that gets into a bar brawl and someone dies gets off a lot easier than a planned murder. My feeling is, so you didn't plan it, so what. Instead of a manslaughter charge for a vehicular homicide where the perp has had three or more DUI's, I think it should be murder in the first.
Anyway, a broken clock is right twice a day, and for once I agree with the harshness of a sentence to a bullet in the back of the head to those that aulterated the milk, and it is probably better than they deserve, IMHO.
No - cattle digest melamine just like grass, albeit not as completely, and with far less nutritional benefit. Here's a story about the routine adulteration of animal feed with melamine in China. Here's an academic paper about the extent to which melamine is digested by cattle.
Anyway, a broken clock is right twice a day, and for once I agree with the harshness of a sentence to a bullet in the back of the head to those that aulterated the milk, and it is probably better than they deserve, IMHO.
Well - you'll be happy to know that the Chinese government imposes the death penalty for all kinds of crimes short of murder, including running brothels, smuggling, theft, sexual molestation, rape, bribe-taking, drug possession, political agitation, etc.
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