April 28, 2011

 

China's school milk programme tainted by poisoning incidents

 

 

A national school milk programme in China, intended to improve the health of the nation's children has been soured again by a series of poisoning incidents.

 

On Friday morning (Apr 22), 251 children at Yuhe Town Central Primary School in Yulin, Shaanxi province, fell ill after drinking school milk produced by the Mengniu Dairy Group. They were sent to hospital for treatment, and were all discharged by the following day.

 

Test results released on Tuesday afternoon (Apr 26), said that the milk had met China's national standards for food safety, and no pathogens were detected in the milk or in the students' vomit and faeces. The results did not explain why all 251 students had fallen sick at the same time.

 

The tests were conducted by Yulin's Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the results were announced by the city's food safety committee.

 

On Tuesday evening (Apr 26), Mengniu said on its website that it would work with the school and the local health department to track the students' health. But public confidence in China's developing school milk programme suffered another blow.

 

Dairy enterprises are impaired by suspected and real poisoning incidents and low profits. Schools stay out of the programme because they do not want to be implicated in safety scandals. And the country has no unified management or supervision of the programme it started in 2000.

 

Milk producers and local watchdogs are the first to be blamed for bad quality control, but experts also have doubts about the guiding theory behind the programme.

 

Mengniu breathed a corporate sigh of relief at the test report, but food safety experts would not let it go easily. Mengniu was involved in two milk incidents in Shaanxi province within the past year, but test results for both set it free. Experts called for a new test by higher authorities.

 

Sang Liwei, a food-safety lawyer in Beijing and a representative of the Global Food Safety Forum, a non-governmental organization, mentioned a previous safety concern at Nongfu Spring in Haikou, Hainan province, in 2009. Haikou Municipal Industrial and Commercial Bureau detected excessive mercury in the drinking water, but a later test by the provincial bureau showed the water met standards.

 

"No matter what happened behind the scenes, it at least showed that two tests can give different answers," Sang said. Food safety experts said if the questioned milk indeed passed the tests, then the standard for dairy products in China is doubtful.

 

"We have two tests: qualitative and quantitative," Sang said. "Sanlu's baby formula had also been qualified before 2008, because there wasn't a test target for melamine," Sang said.

 

An estimated 300,000 infants, including six who died from kidney stones or other kidney damage, became victims of baby formula produced by Sanlu Group Co. in 2008. The chemical melamine, which was added to the milk, caused it to appear to have a higher protein content.

 

Hours after the test results were announced, Mengniu suggested two possible reasons - the "unscientific" way the children drank the milk and hysteria, because "only 16 students vomited and felt nausea at first".

 

"After drinking the cold milk on an empty belly, some students experienced upper abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, and other symptoms of gastritis," said Zhao Yuanhua, vice-president of Mengniu Dairy Group.

 

Zhao told Chinese media that there were other reasons to believe the milk was safe. "Students at another primary school in Hanzhong, Shaanxi province, drank 700 cartons of milk from the same batch, but none experienced discomfort."

 

Zhao said teachers at the Yulin school have said the symptoms appeared first among 16 students and then seemed to spread. "That might be caused by hysteria," he said.

 

Mental health experts said it can happen. "If several children began to vomit and have stomachaches, it's possible that hundreds of others may be influenced… and undergo a collective reaction," said Ji Xuesong, a professor at Peking University's institute of mental health.

 

"If some students showed symptoms like nausea and vomiting, a teacher should avoid asking if others have the same feelings," Zhao said. "Asking that may make more children get infected."