New Zealand diplomats in Beijing knew in the middle of last month about the contaminated milk scandal in China, but lacked sufficient information to make an official report, the foreign ministry said yesterday.
New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra has been under fire for not acting immediately when it knew its Chinese joint venture company Sanlu had sold tainted milk powder.
The foreign ministry said Fonterra gave an informal indication to a New Zealand embassy official on Aug. 14 about reports of a small number of sick children, and that Sanlu appeared to have been receiving contaminated milk.
Five days later, Fonterra sought advice from the embassy about how the Chinese government would respond to notification of a local health issue.
The embassy advised that the Chinese central government would normally be informed by local authorities.
Fonterra then urged local authorities to order a full product recall and the embassy informed the ministry of foreign affairs and trade in Wellington, the ministry said.
The ambassador then told the ministry that Fonterra appeared to have a sensitive problem and the embassy would report formally when it was confident about the information it was receiving.
A formal report was finalized on Sept. 5 and at a special meeting of ministers on Sept. 8 “instructions were given to the embassy in Beijing to contact relevant central government agencies in China to convey the views and concerns of the New Zealand government.”
A full recall of the contaminated milk powder was ordered on Sept. 11.
Fonterra chief executive Andrew Ferrier has repeatedly said that the company tried to “do the right thing” in China by working within the Chinese system once Fonterra directors were alerted to the poisoned milk on Aug. 2.
Meanwhile, China ordered widespread checks on dairy products and a recall of tainted items as a scandal that began with powdered baby formula and spread to milk sparked an outcry from China’s trading partners.
Malaysia joined Singapore in banning Chinese milk imports while a dairy company in Japan pulled Chinese products from supermarket shelves following a similar move in Hong Kong after products were found contaminated with potentially deadly melamine.
China’s State Council, which has ordered the comprehensive checks, promised to punish enterprises and government leaders responsible for the scandal, the Xinhua news agency reported late on Friday.
“Local authorities should rectify the dairy industry so as to bring a fundamental change to the dairy market and products,” Xinhua quoted the council as saying.
The council also called on medical authorities to give free examinations and treatment to infants who fell ill after drinking contaminated milk, Xinhua said.
Panicked parents have crowded China’s hospitals and demanded redress since officials and the Sanlu Group, the country’s biggest maker of infant milk powder, said last week that babies developed kidney stones and complications after drinking milk made from powder tainted with melamine, a compound used in making plastics.
At the latest count, 6,244 children have become ill, four have died and 158 are suffering acute kidney failure.
A government food quality watchdog in China has said nearly 10 percent of milk and drinking yogurt samples from three major dairy companies contained melamine.
Liquid milk and yogurt batches from China Mengniu Dairy Co and Inner Mongolia Yili Industrial Group Co contained melamine. The substance was also found in several samples of dairy products from the Bright Dairy group.
Also See: Food safety controls high on agenda: MAC
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
‘SOMETHING SPECIAL’: Donald Trump vowed to reward his supporters, while President William Lai said he was confident the Taiwan-US partnership would continue Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the US early yesterday morning, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts. With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. As of press time last night, The Associated Press had Trump on 277 electoral college votes to 224 for US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, with Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Michigan and Nevada yet to finalize results. He had 71,289,216 votes nationwide, or 51 percent, while Harris had 66,360,324 (47.5 percent). “We’ve been through so
RSS