More than China’s Milk is Tainted
As a long-time resident of Beijing, concern about food and product-safety is almost a chronic neurosis. Over the past year alone, health scares have ranged from carcinogenic textiles and toothpastes, to the sale of rancid pork from dug up pig carcasses, to hormone and pesticide-laden fruits and veggies and most recently, melamine-laced milk.
This latest episode of the tainted milk has caused particular outrage because of the life-threatening impact on a large number of toddlers (53,000 affected on the latest count). What appeared at first to be a company-specific incident quickly spread to engulf the entire industry, implicating an ever wider web of co-conspirators including the very people whose job it was to police the corporate malefactors.
The story that is unfolding tells of unbridled greed, political wrangling and high-level cover-up. It has thrown up searching questions about China’s own brand of über-capitalism, characterised by weak regulatory oversight, compromised public institutions and entrenched collusion between businesses, the media and government officials in the brazen pursuit of profit.
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