Crying over spilt milk

I am on the warpath – ready to cut down corrupt officials with a few withering looks. *In fact, when Lady Fi is angry, she resembles a demented Rottweiler (no offence meant, oh rottweilers) – claims Sir Pe. OK – that last part is not really true. I put in that comment for extra drama…

Still, there is no doubt about it. I’m angry, furious, in a rage and hopping mad.

Why? Because of the toxic milk scandal in China that is rocking the world right now. You know the scandal I mean: the one about milk powder used in baby formula containing melamine (a banned toxic chemical used in making plastics and fertilizers). About liquid milk and other dairy products that also contain contaminated milk.

It seems that the Chinese dairy industry is hard to control: it consists of many small farms with only a few cows each that sell their raw milk to collecting stations. These stations then sell the milk to the big dairy producers. The farmers want more money for their milk and the dairy producers want to keep prices down, so the middlemen – in this case, the milk collectors – came up with the brilliant solution of watering down the milk and then putting in the magic ingredient melamine so that – in tests – the watered down milk appears to have a higher protein content than it actually contains. Why? Because the milk collectors get more money for this ‘better’ quality milk!

Now, that’s a wonderful idea, isn’t it? Let’s poison the milk used to make baby formula, sweets, buns, yoghurt and ice-cream. Let’s make a few bucks and damn the human suffering….

OK. It’s not only the middlemen that are to blame. Apparently, tampering with milk in China is widely used and it is no secret that it occurs. The laws to prevent this kind of thing seem to have more loopholes than your average Swiss cheese.

And then there is the question of covering up the scandal because of the Olympics. The first reports of sick children started coming in at the end of 2007. And yet – nothing was done! What was the government doing during all this?

And the worst part of it all is that the victims are the poor: those Chinese that could not afford foreign milk formula because it is so much more expensive than the Chinese counterparts.

And why is it that about 90% of all Chinese mothers do not breastfeed? Well, the world’s largest companies are already in there – at the hospitals – telling them to give their babies milk formula because it is so much more nutritious than breast milk.

You guessed it: the milk formula market is a billion dollar industry!

Does any of this ring a bell?

Flashback to the late 1970s and all the way through the 80s. People around the world boycotted Nestlé because of their aggressive sales campaigns to promote bottle feeding in developing countries. And, as a result, mothers mixed the milk powder with contaminated water (the only water available) with disastrous results.

In fact, as late as 2005, Nestlé’s milk products in China were found to contain iodine…

Mmm… could it be time for another boycott of dairy products?

No matter what: we should certainly be crying over spilt milk. In fact, we should be raging!