Fonterra, Why You Again?

Parents across China are in panic when newspapers revealed many girls and infants were found to sexually matured.  Their breasts developed and their female hormone level are equal or higher than female adults.  They all had been drinking milk powder produced by 'ShengYuan'.

Resembling what happened after the melamine tragedy two years ago when millions children poisoned and hundreds died, the government reacted exactly the same.  The national diary monitoring agency refused to test the milk powder sent to them by parents, citing cost issue.  While news and rumors alike keep fomenting for days and into weeks, not even one sample of milk had been tested.  Well, that's what you expected from a communism dictatorship control, right?

Yes, but there is other discoveries, not on communism ideology, but on greedy money, nonetheless.

Recall the melamine incident two years ago.  The manufacture, SanLu (or Triple Deers in Chinese), which was found to produce the fatal milk over years were a subsidiary of the Fonterra of New Zealand.  Fonterra claimed that although they knew the issue long before, they couldn't tell the public because they only have 44% share of the manufacture.  On one hand they urged their Chinese partners to alert the public, on the other hand, they sat still watching millions of children poisoned by their milk each and everyday and did nothing to stop the production.  Fonterra acted only after Chinese news media broke out the horror story.  Fonterra notified then New Zealand Prime Minister, who commanded her Foreign Minister to talk about this with his Chinese counterpart.

This time, too, Fonterra is talking after the news media stepped in.  ShengYuan had long claimed Fonterra as its exclusive source of diary materials.  Imported source had been the most known sell point of ShengYuan.  Many Chinese parents who had been scared from the quality issue of Chinese product buy ShengYuan diary product because of this line.  Only after the news coverage of the hormone issue, Fonterra released an announcement stating that it was not ShengYuan's exclusive source for raw materials.

Why You Again? Fonterra?

Fonterra is not the only foreign diary player in China.  As a matter of fact, all major international diary producers had significant presence in China, the largest diary market in the world.  In the aftermath of the melamine incident two years ago, and numerous other quality related issues, many Chinese consumers only buy foreign imports and foreign brands.  ShengYuan is the only domestic brand with meaningful market share in infant diary product.  That largely have to be attributed to their advertising line of the Fonterra tie.  How come Fonterra is the one who is linked to the only two major diary product scandals? Why Fonterra?

Only greediness can explain.  Instead of setting up partnership with reputed brands or setting up own produce and manufacture channels like other international brands do, Fonterra adopted a cheap approach to the Chinese market by lending its names to junk brands, like Sanlu and ShengYuan.  Fonterra enjoyed the profits when it worked, and severed the tie when it didn't.  Fonterra, do you really think you can come out of this clean?

Melamine in Milk Originally Imported from New Zealand

The whole tainted infant milk ordeal saw a sharp U-turn when it was discovered that ingredients imported from New Zealand had been mixed with melamine already. It has been confirmed by test of samples both in China, and those in New Zealand that 'lactoferrin', a key ingredient in infant formula produced in New Zealand, had been mixed with melamine.

New Zealand is the largest dairy producing country with most number of cows in the world, and manufactures around the world use lactoferrin produced in New Zealand to process infant formula. The suspected source was traced back to a company named Tatua. Tatua is one of the largest company of its kind. Retrospectively thinking, it's reasonable that among all the Chinese powder milk that had been found to be tainted by melamine, Sanlu, which New Zealand dairy producer Fonterra holds 43% share, is the worst.

It's such a shame that China did not test import dairy product carefully. As of today, it was reported melamine had caused at least 4 infant death, and tens of thousands babies hospitalized.

The New Zealand Food Safety Authority released a statement on September 24, 2008 that the level of melamine found in New Zealand product was low, probably came as "an unintended outcome of the manufacturing process".

Tatua's CEO Paul McGilvary said Tatua had voluntarily suspended its production, although he insisted that melamine found in lactoferrin produced by the New Zealand dairy producer was not a health risk to human. Tatua's board is to meet on September 30, 2008 to discuss the melamine issue.

A Timeline of the Sanlu Milk Case

Date	Progress	Source of Information
9/16/2008	Another infant was confirmed died from using Fonterra Sanlu powder milk	Fonterra
9/15/2008	Melamine was detected from products of Haoniu Dairy of Gansu Pronvince. Haoniu is a partner of Fonterra Sanlu, and follow Fonterra Sanlu production guideline	Xinhua News
9/15/2008	Fonterra's CEO Andrew Ferrier refused to take responsibility for not having gone public six weeks earlier when he first learned of the crisis	Andrew Ferrier
9/14/2008	Reporting and Discussion of the case was banned by The Propaganda Department of the CCP, except that by the official Xinhua News Agency	Internet Cache
9/13/2008	hundreds of thousands little kids flooded hospitals around the country to do ultrasound scan, which revealed 20-30% had developed varies stages kidney stones.	Jinling Evening Daily, Dr. Feng's Blog
9/13/2008	Health Minister Gao Qiang held press conference, and denied any government awareness of the case before 9/8/2008	Health Minister Gao Qiang
9/12/2008	Evening: Health Ministry notified WHO, and launched Public Recall, 700 tons could not be traced	News Report
9/12/2008	Morning: 800 police stormed 41 dairy farms. 78 farmers were questioned and 19 were arrested for allegedly mixing melamine into milk	News Report
9/11/2008	A Gansu newspaper named Sanlu in connection with infant kidney failures	Nes Report
9/10/2008	Professor Sun Xizhao of Nanjing University wrote to newspaper questioned an Unnamed Milk Powder caused infant kidney failure. The same day Sanlu denied any knowledge of it	News Report, Sanlu website
9/9/2008	Health Ministry ordered recall	Health Ministry Gao Qiang
9/9/2008	Baidu refused to honor the 'protection status' agreement when requested by Sanlu	Baidu
9/8/2008	Prime Minister Helen Clark met with cabinet regarding the situation and ordered Fonterra to notify Beijing	Helen Clark
9/8/2008	Sanlu submit a written report to Hebei Province, Health Minister Gao Qiang claimed that this was the first time Sanlu notified government officials of any level	Health Minister Gao Qiang
9/5/2008	New Zealand Prime Minister was informed of the situation	Prime Minister Helen Clark
8/27/2008	Dr. Zhang Wen of Huazhong University of Science and Technology told news media that Sanlu infant formula had caused many infants kidney failures in the past year. This was the first time a medical doctor named Sanlu to the news media, although many had been discussing this privately	News Report
8/17/2008	National top food safety agency AQSIG visited Sanlu but didn't make any decision	News Report
8/14/2008	New Zealand Embassy in Beijing was informed of the crisis	Helen Clark
8/11/2008	A memo from Sanlu's PR Consulting Firm Beijing Lantaotonglue noted numerious negative reference of Sanlu with connection to infants kidney failures. The memo laid out three strategies in handling the crisis, including purchasing a 'protection status' from the largest Chinese language search engine Baidu at the price of RMB Yuan 300 million	FAX from Lantaotonglue
8/6/2008	Sanlu coordinates mass medical assistance for infant victims	Sanlu, News Report
8/5/2008	Sanlu's dairy product produced after 8/5/2008 are free of melamine	Tian Wenhua, Chairwoman of Sanlu
8/4/2008	Sanlu stopped 2,000 tons of powder milk from entering market, and secretly withdrew 8080 tons of powder milk contaminated with Melamine through the Health Ministry	Tian Wenhua, Chairwoman of Sanlu
8/3/2008	Sanlu alerted the situation to the City of Shijiangzhuang, Hebei Province and Health Ministry	Tian Wenhua, Chairwoman of Sanlu
8/2/2008	Fonterra learnt of the situation	Fonterra
8/1/2008	Melamine was detected and documented	Sanlu, Tian Wenhua, Sun Dongdong, Professor of Beijing University and expert of the Health Ministry
7/23/2008	Hunan TV Metropolitan Channel reported a sudden alarming rise in infant kidney stones cases. In one hospital received 16 infants with severe kidney stones. The TV program revealed all victims used the same brand of milk. Packages of canned and bagged powder milk was shown on the TV, but did not explicitly name Sanlu	Hunan TV
7/1/2008	Sanlu launched investigation into infants kidney failures after drinking Sanlu infant formula	Tian Wenhua
2/2/2008	A Zhejiang consumer contacted Sanlu, and a range of local authorities after Sanlu powder milk made his daughter difficulty to pee. Later, without knowing the extend and seriousness of the issue, the consumer accepted an exchange of 4 boxes of Sanlu powder milk. He posted his story on a popular Internet community Tianya. This is the first documented exposure of this scandal.	Internet Cache, Wu Yuanping (the consumer)
3/1/2008	Reports of mass infant kidney failure started arriving Sanlu, Sanlu asked government agency's help to test dairy products which all appeared to be acceptable	Sanlu
3/1/2008	Several Inquiries, including one made by a known kidney surgeon, was made to the top food safety agency AQSIQ. These complaints had been deleted from AQSIQ website, but still available from Google cache	Internet Cache and Dr. Feng Dongchuan's Blog
3/1/2008	Hospitals around the country noticed a sharpen increase of infant kidney failure cases, many alerted the manufacture as well as local safety agencies	Sanlu
1/8/2008	Sanlu infant formula received the National Award of Science and Technology Progress, and became the only dairy product ever to receive this top national science and technology award	News Report
9/2/2007	The Propaganda Arm of CCP, the CCTV hailed Sanlu the top quality dairy product in its weekly 'Quality of Made-in-China' Special Program	CCTV, YouTube
7/10/2007	The Director of China FDA (State Food and Drug Administration, SDA) Mr. Zheng Xiaoyu was executed for oversight of the pet food that poisoned American cats	public record
5/8/2007	In the aftermath of the US FDA findings, AQSIQ examined 399 samples of export food products and 800 domestic food products, and failed to find any trace of melamine. AQSIQ hail the result a testimony of excellent food quality in China.	AQSIQ
4/20/2007	AQSIQ ordered all food export must go through melamine tests	AQSIQ
3/30/2007	US FDA declared Melamine was detected in pet food imported from China. Hundreds of cats and little dogs became sick or dead after eating import pet food.	news Report
11/25/2005	New Zealand based Fonterra Acquired 43% of Sanlu, Fonterra has 3 representations on Sanlu's 7 persons board	Public Record, Fonterra
7/5/2005	900 packages of Sanlu yoghurt were confiscated by Tianjin authorities for post-dating production date	News Report
6/1/2004	Sanlu was named in a 'Big Head Baby' scandal of producing low cost powder milk with zero nutritional value and caused 13 babies' death. After an aggressive emergency campaign, Health Minister Gao Qiang arranged to have Sanlu removed from the blacklist.	News Report

Ultimate Citizen's Arrest

New Zealand fugitive Xue Nai Yin was trapped and subdued by a dramatic citizen's arrest in a suburb town on the outskirt of Atlanta, George. Six illegal immigrants from China recognized Xue after reading Chinese newspaper coverage, and tried to alert the police for three times, including went to the police station and talk to patrol officers. Cooks, delivery drivers and waiters in Chinese restaurants, they can't speak English well, and failed to draw attention or assistance from police. Finally they decided to take the matter into their own hands, lured and trapped Xue in an apartment belong to another Chinese. They caught Xue by surprise and tied him up until they got a police to come.

Xue was accused of killing his mail-order wife, who had an affair with a younger man through out the short marriage and blogged in extensive details publicly. Xue left a little daughter born by his wife at a busy rail station before fled to the US. The little girl was known as the pumpkin girl because of the clothing she was wearing at the time.


It's not clear whether the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is aware of the whereabout of the aforementioned six illegals, whose name and address are available on many Chinese newspapers. Anyone who saw the six illegal immigrants (Pictured: Lin Bao Li, Gui Sen Wu, Wei Chen and Jinbo Qi. Not shown in the picture: Dong Shun Li and Ding Qing Chen), call ICE at 1-866-347-2423.