China Passes Food-Safety Law

China has passed its first food-safety law, and established a cabinet-level commission to oversee it. The idea is to create a national set of food-safety standards under one regulator and put more legal liability on China’s 500,000 food producers.
How effective it is and whether it will reassure consumers whose confidence has been left in tatters [...]

Death Sentences Handed Down In Tainted Formula Scandal

The sentences in the melamine-tainted infant formula trials have been handed down, Xinhua reports. They are harsh, if not unexpectedly so.
The most prominent defendant Tian Wenhua, who was chairwoman of the Sanlu Group, the largest producer of baby milk powder, gets life imprisonment and a 20 million yuan ($2.9 million) fine. Now-bankrupt Sanlu was fined [...]

Parents Of First Baby To Die Of Tainted Infant Formula Accept Compensation

The parents of the first child to die from ingesting melamine-tainted infant formula has accepted compensation from Sanlu Group, the dairy company at the heart of the scandal, their lawyers say. They have taken the 200,000 yuan ($29,000) death payout under the standardized compensation scheme announced last month by China’s dairy association and the 22 [...]

Death Toll From Tainted Baby Formula Officially Raised To Six

The Health Ministry now says that six deaths can be attributed to tainted baby milk powder and that 294,000 infants were hospitalized after drinking the melamine-contaminated formula.
That is a large advance on the last numbers made public, in September, when the scandal first broke: four dead and 53,000 hospitalized. In October, without updating those numbers, [...]

Tainted Baby Formula Death Toll Said To Be Officially Undercounted

The Associated Press is reporting at at least five more infants died after drinking melamine-tainted formula than the three the official numbers count. The news agency also reports that lawyers, doctors and reporters have said privately that authorities pressured them to not play up the human cost or efforts to get compensation from the government [...]

U.S. Tightens Import Restrictions On Foods From China

The U.S. has expanded its import controls on Chinese foods that is suspects might be contaminated with melamine. The U.S Food and Drug Administration has issued a nationwide import alert that applies to all milk products, all milk derived ingredients and all finished food products containing milk. Previously, its controls applied only to specific products. [...]

Hong Kong Finds More Melamine-Tainted Eggs

The melamine-tainted eggs are getting to be like the melamine-tainted baby formula.
First there was one manufacturer whose products were found to be contaminated. Then there were many. Tests in Hong Kong have found three more brands of Chinese eggs containing high levels of the chemical. This all suggests the problems with food safety still run [...]

HK Extends Melamine Testing After Finding Chemical In Chinese Eggs

The melamine-tainted food scare just keeps on spreading. Hong Kong said tody that it is expanding its testing to include meat products imported from China after discovering excessive levels of the chemical in eggs yesterday.
The eggs, from Dalian Hanwei Enterprise Group, contained 4.7 parts per million of melamine, almost double the permitted maximum of 2.5 [...]

More Melamine Problems Pop Up

The melamine-tainted food scandal has taken a couple of bizarre twists.
First,  Britain’s Food Standards Agency said late last week that a Chinese-made novelty food product sold in U.K. sex shops has been taken off the shelves after being found to be contaminated with melamine. A FSA spokesperson said: “This is a first. We’ve never had [...]

The Economics Of Tainting Milk With Melamine

Chemistry World puts some numbers on the cost of adding melamine to milk (here via the Royal Society of Chemistry site). It is a profitable business:
Industrial melamine costs about 12,000 yuan (US$1765) per tonne, much higher than the price of milk – 1200-1800 yuan per tonne. But the practice of adding melamine to milk is [...]