Police in northern China have arrested 27 people in their probe into tainted milk that has sickened 53,000 children and soiled China’s reputation abroad, state media reported yesterday.
The 27 are among 36 detained since authorities in Hebei began investigating Sanlu Group, the company at the center of the scandal, earlier this month.
The investigation followed the discovery that the industrial chemical melamine, which is normally used to make plastics, had been added to Sanlu powdered milk.
The Xinhua news agency had reported 22 detentions by Monday and said those arrested were involved in a network that made and sold melamine and added it to milk.
Four children have died so far after drinking milk tainted with the chemical, which can make watered-down milk appear richer in protein.
According to police investigations in Hebei, where Sanlu is headquartered, melamine was produced at underground plants and sold to breeding farms and milk purchasing stations, the China Daily reported yesterday.
The report said Chinese officials, learning that the purchasing stations were among the key links in how the contaminated milk spread, have begun a national campaign to overhaul the system.
A total of 31 provinces have set up special task forces to supervise the purchasing centers and implement more standardized practices, the newspaper said.
Milk purchasing centers only began operating in recent years and the government has not yet set up a specific department to supervise them, it said.
The newspaper cited the agriculture ministry as saying melamine had most probably been mixed with milk at the stations.
“We will resolutely put an end to the practice of adding melamine to fresh milk,” Chinese Agriculture Minister Sun Zhengcai (孫政才) said in an interview with the People’s Daily, which was posted on the paper’s Web site.
“We will carefully monitor the production, sale and processing of fresh milk,” Sun was quoted as saying.
Chinese officials have struggled in recent days to contain the fallout from the scandal as a growing range of China-made products have been pulled off shelves across the world.
British sweet maker Cadbury said on Monday it had found traces of melamine in chocolates made at its Beijing factory and ordered a recall of those products in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Australia.
The 11 brands recalled include Cadbury Eclairs and bulk packets of Dairy Milk chocolate, the company said earlier.
Indonesia’s food supervisory agency said over the weekend it discovered 16 Chinese-made dairy products that contained melamine, adding that all those products — including well-known brands such as Snickers and M&M’s chocolates — would be destroyed immediately.
Mars said it was “extremely surprised” by that decision, insisting other tests had cleared its products of contamination.
More than a dozen Asian and African countries, plus the 27-member EU, have taken steps to ban or limit consumption of products containing Chinese dairy.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home