Chinese products: a danger to the world?

"Made in China" may soon be seen not as a recommendation, but as a warning.

Three babies have died and at least 6,200 have fallen ill, many with kidney stones, after consuming milk manufactured by the Sanlu group of China. The milk had been contaminated with melamine. Shockingly, the milk from 20 other Chinese milk manufacturers has also been found to contain the adulterant.

Now, for those who attend to the news, this seems all very familiar. Even the word melamine should be known to many readers. This is because China has done this before. This is the not the first poisonous baby milk scandal. It is also not the first time melamine has ended up in food. What is really disgusting is why melamine is put in food - deliberately. It fools the chemical tests used to determine the quality of the food. Yes, that is right, melamine is deliberately being put in Chinese food to make it look better on scientific tests. You see, melamine is nitrogen bearing and fools tests into determining that the food is protein rich (since nitrogen is used as a marker for the presence of protein, which contains nitrogen). That is why it is being put into baby milk - to make the milk seem richer and better. In fact, it becomes a toxic beverage that can kill babies. Thus, those who adulterate the milk supply with melamine do so for personal profit, at the expense of the lives and health of thousands of babies. That is the reality of modern Chinese business practices.

It is not long since thousands of American dogs fell ill, many dying due to melamine contamination of their pet food - for the same reason, no doubt, as the baby milk was contaminated - to make money for some crooked businessman.

In the Sanlu case, two brothers have been arrested for supplying three tons of adulterated milk, per day, to Sanlu. They had been watering the milk down, to increase profits, and had hidden this dilution by adding melamine to make it seem richer in protein than it actually was (thus obscuring the fact that it had been diluted). They face the death penalty if convicted - and frankly I hope they get it, for babies have died because of their greed and dishonesty and many thousands are ill.

The nauseating twist in the tale is the motivation of the brothers for doing this. It was a way of getting back at Sanlu for rejecting past shipments of milk (no doubt for being substandard) and costing them lost revenue. So, they hatched the plot as a means to extract extra money from Sanlu to compensate them for previous losses. It was a case of business revenge. Yet, babies are paying the price for this spitefulness with their lives.

The fact that 20 companies in China have been producing contaminated milk shows that dishonesty, greed and a disregard for the health of the consumer are rampant in Chinese business. This means that no Chinese product can be regarded as safe for consumption. There are many instances of poisoning in other foodstuffs and pharmaceuticals, as well as many other areas such as lead bearing toys.

These kinds of problems in Chinese business have been going on for many years - and nothing effective seems to be being done about it. So, as a consumer, there is only one thing you can do to protect yourself and your family: look for the Made in China label - and refuse to buy it. Yes, it may be cheap, but it may also be dangerous and, to my eyes, dangerous is never truly cheap - for the price in health can be very high.

I hear that the FDA of America has checked with all major US manufacturers of baby milk to check that they are not sourcing their materials in China. It is time for other countries, too, to be wary of anything of Chinese origin.

I hope to see a day when Chinese business behaves with the regard and respect for the consumer common in the Western world. What is certain is that they are not there yet.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

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