HONG KONG - When, on New Year's Eve, Chinese authorities announced that they
had arrested three Shanghai dairy executives and seized the
melamine-contaminated milk they were trying to sell to an unsuspecting public,
it appeared China's new food-regulatory regime was kicking in with impressive
results. Perhaps the horrors of the tainted-milk scandal of 2008 - which left
six children dead, 300,000 others sick and 22 dairies named and shamed - had
shocked regulators into action. Maybe this marked the beginning of a more
efficient and reliable product-safety ethos in China.
Within days, however, the bottom dropped out of this story, and a very
different moral emerged: on the flawed Chinese production
line, it is still business as usual - and, rather than any new commitment to
food safety, that business is marked by corruption, tainted products and a
deeply rooted aversion to exposing the embarrassing truth.
What looked like a tale of progress quickly turned into the reverse. As it
turned out, Chinese regulators had begun investigating the Shanghai Panda Dairy
Co, one of the companies shamed in the scandal of 2008, nearly a year ago, and
the three executives were detained last April. All of this, however, was
shrouded in official secrecy until the misleading announcement of December 31.
A report in the 21st Century Business Herald, a Guangzhou-based newspaper,
raised questions about the timing of the investigation, and then, last
Wednesday, a Shanghai official owned up to the truth.
"In February of 2009, the Shanghai Fengxian prosecutor found that these
products were contaminated and started an investigation," said Shen Weiping, a
spokesman for the prosecutor's office in Fengxian district, where Shanghai
Panda is. "On April 28, the three executives from Panda Dairy were arrested."
Shen did not say whether contaminated milk from the dairy had sickened or
killed anyone and offered only the weakest justification for keeping the probe
under wraps for nearly a year, maintaining that it would have been wrong for
prosecutors to reveal any information about an ongoing investigation. The case
"was not allowed to be publicized at the time", he said. "This is because the
case was under investigation."
But where is the prosecutorial principle that says an investigation must be
kept secret until it has been completed - especially when that investigation
involves a contaminated product that puts public health at risk? There is no
such principle, and Shen and his office surely know that.
Indeed, China's new food-safety law, prompted by the tainted-milk scandal of
2008 and enacted in June, explicitly requires authorities to alert the public
whenever food products have been found to be unsafe for consumption. The
Fengxian prosecutor's office clearly did not follow the law.
To increasingly skeptical Chinese consumers, the Shanghai Panda saga looks like
yet another alarming example of a breakdown in an unreliable quality-control
system that officials, always worried about shielding themselves from scandal,
once again chose to cover up rather than expose with the necessary promptness;
meanwhile, people's lives may have been put at risk.
In the scandal of 2008, Shanghai Panda products were found to contain some of
the highest levels of melamine, an industrial chemical normally used in the
manufacture of plastics, fertilizer and cleaning agents that unscrupulous
Chinese milk processors added to their watered-down milk to boost its protein
count. The chemical was found in dairy products ranging from baby formula to
yogurt to chocolate bars. In high concentrations, it leads to kidney stones and
even renal failure.
Like other dairies charged in the scandal, Shanghai Panda was forced to suspend
operations until satisfying investigators that sufficient safety standards had
been implemented. Now it appears that Shanghai Panda executives, after pledging
themselves to the new safety regime, made the astonishing decision to resell
contaminated milk that had been returned to the company as part of a nationwide
recall of tainted dairy products.
It is good news that authorities discovered the executives' venality, but their
reluctance to go public with this news is troubling and hardly promises a new
day in China's quest to improve its quality-control procedures and assure
product safety.
The lag time between official and public knowledge was also a disturbing factor
in the scandal of 2008.
Consumer complaints about melamine-tainted baby formula produced by the
now-bankrupt Sanlu Group of dairies started as early as May, but it was early
August before Sanlu submitted a written report addressing these complaints to
officials in Hebei province's capital city, Shijiazhuang, where the company is
headquartered. And it was a month later before Shijiazhuang officials finally
blew the whistle that launched a nationwide probe involving 22 dairies.
In the meantime, from August 8 to 24, Beijing had played host to arguably the
most successful Summer Olympic Games ever. China topped the gold-medal chart,
won worldwide praise for its Olympic architecture and hospitality and boosted
its claim to belong in the first tier of nations - all of this without the hint
of a tainted-milk scandal that was already at least four months old.
Analysts suspected a cover-up to spare the Chinese leadership the humiliation
the story would have brought before and during the Olympics. In the case of
Shanghai Panda, local officials were probably more interested in saving
themselves from embarrassment so soon after the national disgrace of 2008.
Unfortunately, Chinese officialdom has yet to learn that delays and cover-ups
only serve to exacerbate scandals, not bury them, thus making authorities look
even worse in the end. The failed attempt to cover up the spread of severe
acute respiratory syndrome in 2003 is the most profound recent example of this.
Lives were lost, worldwide panic ensued and China's reputation for
trustworthiness suffered a major blow.
Other product-safety scandals have also damaged China's image abroad. In 2007,
pet food made with melamine-tainted ingredients imported from China killed or
sickened thousands of cats and dogs in the United States. In addition, the
"made in China" label has been tarnished by reports of toys coated in lead
paint, toxic toothpaste and exploding automobile tires. Last year in the US,
homeowners filed a rash of class-action lawsuits alleging that high levels of
sulfur in Chinese-made drywall had damaged their homes and their health.
Against this background, it is fair to say that China's 1.3 billion people are
not the only ones worried about the goods produced in their nation. China is
now the world's biggest exporter, and with that title comes great
responsibility. (The latest Chinese data suggest that China will overtake
Germany's total export haul for 2009.)
The executions of two corrupt milk producers in November, in addition to the
stiff jail sentences handed down to other industry officials judged to share
responsibility for the death and illness caused by melamine-tainted milk, will
ring hollow unless China's new regulatory regime is taken seriously by those
who are supposed to enforce it.
Kent Ewing is a Hong Kong-based teacher and writer. He can be reached at
kewing@hkis.edu.hk.
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