Milk
That first year I came to China, I know a lot of family and friends worried about our personal safety when it came to the food we ate. At that time, though, it seemed we were safer eating here than in the US. It was 2006, and so many vegetables, from green onions to bag spinach to tomatoes, were being recalled for e coli contamination. Up until recently, it was something I would tell new foreigners here when they would express concern about the food quality in Mainland China.
I want to thank all you, especially Mom & Dad, who have emailed us about the dairy situation here. Rest assured that we have been able to follow the recall, and our family is really not exposed to the melamine. Nearly all of our dairy products, from milk to butter to cheese, are imported from New Zealand, Europe, or the US. We chose this two path years ago, but really more due to taste rather than quality. Quite frankly, I noticed a major difference in taste between the Chinese or Hong Kong dairy products and those for which I pay a ridiculous amount of money. We don't use any powdered milk substitute, the product family that posed the biggest risks.
One area in which we were a little vulnerable is Myles' addiction to this really popular yogurt drink called suan nai or suan suan ru. His favorite is produced by Yili, one of the big dairy companies that has been affected by the melamine probe.
Earlier in the week, I read in the paper that some Yili Dairy products were being recalled, though suan nai was not listed. I hadn't let Myles have any since early this week, waiting to see if this product would also be recalled. In Hong Kong yesterday I noticed at one grocery store that many of their mainland dairy products, including suan nai were still on the shelves. Even in the Hong Kong SCMP that morning, the Hong Kong Centre for Food Safety said that only one Yili product, a frozen yogurt bar, tested positive for presence of melamine. Two major grocery chains in Hong Kong, Park N Shop and Wellcome, were still not recalling any Yili or Mengniu products, saying that the HK government had determined them as safe. Jusco in Hong Kong and Yukee, on the other hand, were pre-emptively pulling the product, according to the SCMP.
Of course, all that changed as of this morning.
Randy sent me a text message this morning telling me that Myles' suan nai was off limits. I wasn't sure if he were advising based on a rumor, or on an established fact. I checked the South China Morning Post, and Hong Kong was now recalling all Yili and Mengniu products. The suan nai was not specifically listed by the Hong Kong authorities as testing positive, but as our own pre-emptive measure, our suan nai went into the garbage. Myles was, of course, upset, but later went up to the guy working the newsstand where we often buy his suan nai. He had to tell him, he said. "Suan nai bu hao," yogurt milk is bad. Later I read in the Shenzhen Daily something that would have prevented me from ever letting Myles drink suan nai, and maybe now ever again. According to the SZ Daily, Yili and Mengniu have been exempt from any government inspections specifically for their yogurt and blended milk drinks. That exemption has been lifted now, of course.
Later this afternoon, Myles and I were making our Starbucks stop before heading to Carrefour for some groceries. Starbucks has stopped making drinks with any dairy products whatsoever. Could they interest us into trying delicious soy milk substitute?
Yeah, there's a reason I'm not vegan. I had iced tea instead.
At Carrefour, I was greeted by a scene that was completely different than what I saw in the Hong Kong grocery store yesterday. At first, it seemed the same. Yili's shelf milk product was on sale this week already, and then slashed in price another 20 cents. However, any shopper today looking to take advantage of this deal would have been greatly disappointed. These were pulled from the shelves.
The dairy shelves were not fully stocked as they were in Hong Kong yesterday. They were chaotic messes, as Carrefour employees rushed to pull some product and fill in the gaps with similar products that aren't part of the recall.
This has been somewhat difficult for us to follow, because we are always relying on English-language news. There have been reports in Western media that information has been limited in the Chinese press. However, what I am gathering from news aggregating sites like Danwei.org, many Chinese news sites are publishing rather complete information, including exact melamine levels in tested product. We just aren't able to access it all in English. That has been the most frustrating for the few other foreigners with whom I've discussed this subject.
Of course, the primary products of concern, those that started this whole thing, are the baby milk powders, or as we Americans call it, formula. Many of the products I've mentioned above have shown only trace amounts of melamine, while the baby formula has tested toxic. Today at Carrefour, several well-known imported brands were prominently displayed. According to, again, the Shenzhen Daily, most of the formula sold in Shenzhen is actually imported, which I would think is rather unusual. There has to be a huge price difference between Abbott's Europe-produced formula and domestic brands like Sanlu.
This brings me to another topic I've been thinking about blogging for some time, the wide variety of powdered milk that is sold in China. In the US, pediatricians usually recommend allowing children to switch to regular dairy milk sometime in early toddler-hood. The Similac/Enfamil companies usually don't push products for older children in the US. However, here in Asia, milk powder is the recommended product for people of all ages. When we watched the Super Bowl this year, our satellite feed from the Philippines was almost completely sponsored by Alaska powdered milk, a product for school-aged children. In Chinese grocery stores I see milk powder for geriatrics, milk powder for teenagers, and even milk powder for expectant mothers.
A few years ago one of my American friends here was prescribed by her Hong Kong OB one glass of this kind of milk powder a day early in her first pregnancy, because this OB was afraid her Western-level of real milk drinking would cause her to gain too much weight. Funny, when you consider the American Dairy Industry touts in some of its got milk? ads healthy weight management as one of the benefits of drinking milk.
Milk powder is one of those products that are so popular here, and yet, I don't quite understand them.
I want to thank all you, especially Mom & Dad, who have emailed us about the dairy situation here. Rest assured that we have been able to follow the recall, and our family is really not exposed to the melamine. Nearly all of our dairy products, from milk to butter to cheese, are imported from New Zealand, Europe, or the US. We chose this two path years ago, but really more due to taste rather than quality. Quite frankly, I noticed a major difference in taste between the Chinese or Hong Kong dairy products and those for which I pay a ridiculous amount of money. We don't use any powdered milk substitute, the product family that posed the biggest risks.
One area in which we were a little vulnerable is Myles' addiction to this really popular yogurt drink called suan nai or suan suan ru. His favorite is produced by Yili, one of the big dairy companies that has been affected by the melamine probe.
Earlier in the week, I read in the paper that some Yili Dairy products were being recalled, though suan nai was not listed. I hadn't let Myles have any since early this week, waiting to see if this product would also be recalled. In Hong Kong yesterday I noticed at one grocery store that many of their mainland dairy products, including suan nai were still on the shelves. Even in the Hong Kong SCMP that morning, the Hong Kong Centre for Food Safety said that only one Yili product, a frozen yogurt bar, tested positive for presence of melamine. Two major grocery chains in Hong Kong, Park N Shop and Wellcome, were still not recalling any Yili or Mengniu products, saying that the HK government had determined them as safe. Jusco in Hong Kong and Yukee, on the other hand, were pre-emptively pulling the product, according to the SCMP.
Of course, all that changed as of this morning.
Randy sent me a text message this morning telling me that Myles' suan nai was off limits. I wasn't sure if he were advising based on a rumor, or on an established fact. I checked the South China Morning Post, and Hong Kong was now recalling all Yili and Mengniu products. The suan nai was not specifically listed by the Hong Kong authorities as testing positive, but as our own pre-emptive measure, our suan nai went into the garbage. Myles was, of course, upset, but later went up to the guy working the newsstand where we often buy his suan nai. He had to tell him, he said. "Suan nai bu hao," yogurt milk is bad. Later I read in the Shenzhen Daily something that would have prevented me from ever letting Myles drink suan nai, and maybe now ever again. According to the SZ Daily, Yili and Mengniu have been exempt from any government inspections specifically for their yogurt and blended milk drinks. That exemption has been lifted now, of course.
Later this afternoon, Myles and I were making our Starbucks stop before heading to Carrefour for some groceries. Starbucks has stopped making drinks with any dairy products whatsoever. Could they interest us into trying delicious soy milk substitute?
Yeah, there's a reason I'm not vegan. I had iced tea instead.
At Carrefour, I was greeted by a scene that was completely different than what I saw in the Hong Kong grocery store yesterday. At first, it seemed the same. Yili's shelf milk product was on sale this week already, and then slashed in price another 20 cents. However, any shopper today looking to take advantage of this deal would have been greatly disappointed. These were pulled from the shelves.
The dairy shelves were not fully stocked as they were in Hong Kong yesterday. They were chaotic messes, as Carrefour employees rushed to pull some product and fill in the gaps with similar products that aren't part of the recall.
This has been somewhat difficult for us to follow, because we are always relying on English-language news. There have been reports in Western media that information has been limited in the Chinese press. However, what I am gathering from news aggregating sites like Danwei.org, many Chinese news sites are publishing rather complete information, including exact melamine levels in tested product. We just aren't able to access it all in English. That has been the most frustrating for the few other foreigners with whom I've discussed this subject.
Of course, the primary products of concern, those that started this whole thing, are the baby milk powders, or as we Americans call it, formula. Many of the products I've mentioned above have shown only trace amounts of melamine, while the baby formula has tested toxic. Today at Carrefour, several well-known imported brands were prominently displayed. According to, again, the Shenzhen Daily, most of the formula sold in Shenzhen is actually imported, which I would think is rather unusual. There has to be a huge price difference between Abbott's Europe-produced formula and domestic brands like Sanlu.
This brings me to another topic I've been thinking about blogging for some time, the wide variety of powdered milk that is sold in China. In the US, pediatricians usually recommend allowing children to switch to regular dairy milk sometime in early toddler-hood. The Similac/Enfamil companies usually don't push products for older children in the US. However, here in Asia, milk powder is the recommended product for people of all ages. When we watched the Super Bowl this year, our satellite feed from the Philippines was almost completely sponsored by Alaska powdered milk, a product for school-aged children. In Chinese grocery stores I see milk powder for geriatrics, milk powder for teenagers, and even milk powder for expectant mothers.
A few years ago one of my American friends here was prescribed by her Hong Kong OB one glass of this kind of milk powder a day early in her first pregnancy, because this OB was afraid her Western-level of real milk drinking would cause her to gain too much weight. Funny, when you consider the American Dairy Industry touts in some of its got milk? ads healthy weight management as one of the benefits of drinking milk.
Milk powder is one of those products that are so popular here, and yet, I don't quite understand them.
Comments
(as in en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestl%C3%A9_boycott
As I recall part of that tragedy was they had one "formula" (the healthy lo-salt one) for their customers in western markets, and another hi-salt (toxic to a developing infant's kidneys) "formula" they sold to those who could afford it in the third world and aid agencies working in the third world. Perhaps, mercantilism (*) and the tragedy of want (malnourished mothers may learn to rely on/become addicted to powdered milk if their own supply never materializes when the babies arrive) the perception persisted amongst mothers in those necks of the wood that the Western imported powder was "better" (even tho' it manifestly was not)
I worry that the stock piles of tainted dairy products will find a disreputable buyer and they will pop up in Sudan or elsewhere repackaged as "Emergency Aid from the Generous People of the Republic of China" - if I was living in Asia I would want to see it burned or buried like the mad cow carcasses in the UK (the uncanny thing about these kind of crises is the knock-on detrimental effects, I never ate many burgers during my visits to my homeland, but just being there for more than 6 months in the last ten years has made me "damaged goods" for the Red Cross blood drives, I may not donate blood)
__
* the temptation to accumulate wealth by protectionism of exporters over importers (what George Washington decried about the British Empire which banned manufacturing in its colonies so it could import their wool & cotton and export fabric back at a hefty profit) In the Chinese economy as I understand it, the provinces where the cows roam free in smallholdings send the raw milk to a local central-planning dairy, which processes it for longer-term storage as ultra-heat pasteurized bulk milk in tetrapaks or dehydrates it to a evaporated / condensed / powder form for export back to the provinces or on to the nearest urban metropolis. This is not a form of free trade but rather imperial mercantilism. It seems certain provincial party leaders kept the "dirt" under wraps until the Olympics were over. For their own benefit or out of a sense of national pride? We may never know: fear certainly will keep mouths tightly shut since the top man for food and drug safety lost his head (literally capital punishment) for taking bribes during the last scandal.
I will pray that the powers that be in China come to recognize that liberty of conscience is a good thing, that allowing faith communities to flourish will help their flock learn to place accountability to their God ahead of worldly gain!
In areas without a safe water supply, powdered formula could only be mixed with dirty water. So babies who by not being breastfed were not receiving their mother's antibodies, were being fed large amounts of contaminated water. Large numbers of them died of diarrhea, which can be quickly fatal without the ability to rehydrate by IV. Also, families could not afford the formula, so after the initial supply from the hospital, which got them hooked, they would overdilute the formula, and babies developed protein malnutrition.
Even poorly nourished women, short of starvation, produce breast milk good enough to sustain the life and growth of a baby. In primitive conditions, any form of infant feeding except breastfeeding is usually fatal. Yet Nestle was sending women dressed in white like nurses to maternity wards to encourage women to use its product.
That's why Nestles was boycotted. I don't know if the boycott hurt them financially, but they didn't like the bad publicity, and at least agreed to back off some on the active promotion of bottle feeding in third world countries, specifically on the "milk nurses" who went into maternity wards to promote the practice.
Susan Peterson