Melamine poison use "rampant" in China feed business
Pastor Dale Morgan
Melamine poison use "rampant" in China feed business*
25 Sep 2008 04:49:40 GMT
Source: Reuters
HARBIN, China, Sept 25 (Reuters) - Use of the industrial chemical
melamine, which has made thousands of Chinese infants sick through
tainted baby formula, is rampant among farmers and feed-ingredient
manufacturers, a Chinese feedmill owner said.
"It is like a chain," said Sun Erwu, who owns a feedmill in Hebei
province, the centre of the milk-powder scandal.
"If cows are fed with poor feed and produce lower-protein milk, dairy
plants will not accept the milk, so many add melamine," Sun told Reuters
on the sidelines of a grains conference.
Nitrogen-rich melamine can be added to substandard or watered-down milk
to fool quality checks, which often use nitrogen levels to measure the
amount of protein in milk. The chemical is used in pesticides and in
making plastics.
"Farmers have no idea what melamine is. They only know if they add it,
their milk will not be refused."
China has stepped up testing for melamine in feed after milk powder
tainted with the chemical made more than 54,000 infants sick and at
least four infants died, the latest in a series of health scandals to
blight China's food industry.
Sun said he was not surprised when his meal was found to contain
melamine as it was so widely used in Hebei and neighbouring Shandong
province. He said he was the victim but was fined 30,000 yuan ($4,400)
nevertheless.
"I have long wanted to test my products, but to test for melamine is
expensive and it takes a long time," he said, adding that testing one
sample would cost more than 1,000 yuan ($145) -- and then the laboratory
cannot pinpoint the contamination to one ingredient in the meal.
"Soymeal can be contaminated, so can corn gluten meal and cottonseed
meal -- suppliers add melamine into all these supplements," said Sun.
Adding melamine to lower-protein cottonseed meal could mean a profit of
1,000 yuan more per tonne as melamine can make the protein level look as
high as that of rich soymeal, he said.
The cheating was done by milk dealers and milk-collecting stations,
which add melamine to milk to increase protein level to the 3 percent
requested by dairy plants, said Sun, who sells his feed to dairy cow
farmers.
Still, many farmers, which have small numbers of dairy cows, were
victims as they were unware that melamine was added by dealers at
collecting stations, he said.
China said on Wednesday the tainted milk scandal had been brought under
control and recently tested liquid milk samples showed no traces of a
toxic chemical.
"There is no problem," Xiang Yuzhang, the national quality watchdog's
chief inspection official, told reporters in Beijing.
"It has been brought under control, more or less. There are no more
problems in the market. As far as I know, there will be no more bad
news." (Reporting by Niu Shuping; Editing by Nick Macfie) ($1 = 6.824 Yuan)