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Melamine Milk Powder

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Submitted By helenasuisui
Words 1410
Pages 6
English 102
Professor Morgan
Yuedan Zeng
11/30/2011
Worrying Food Safety in China: Melamine milk powder Every year before I go back to China, many relatives and friends ask me to bring some milk powders and infant foods. Why? Because people in China think the food safety is untrustworthy, a big amount of people were sickened and killed by food. Unlike the food safety issue in U.S, which is caused by biological reasons mostly, most of incidents of safety in China are man-made. The Food Safety Law has been enacted for two years, but the food safety issues emerge endlessly. It often said that food is the first necessity of the people; food is the most basic condition for survival. If the food is not safe then the life does not have safeguard. A major food safety incident in China was made public in September 2008. Kidney and urinary tract effects, including kidney stones, affected about 300,000 Chinese infants and young children, with six reported deaths. Melamine had been deliberately added at milk-collecting stations to diluted raw milk ostensibly to boost its protein content (Tritscher 1). Milk powder produced by Sanlu Group was found to contain 2563 mg of melamine per kg, while the allowable amount should be 15 mg(Yuan 22). It is not the first time that the scandal of milk powder came out. In April, 2004, more than 200 infants in Anhui Province were diagnosed to have a disease, which caused the infants' heads to grow much bigger than normal ones. It was found that the substandard milk powder produced by a factory in Fuyang City, east China's Anhui Province, was the cause of the disease (Yuan 23). Soon after the Sanlu scandal, melamine was found in liquid milk and yogurts, frozen desserts, powdered milk and cereal products, confectioneries, cakes and biscuits, protein powders, and some processed foodstuffs. Subsequently, a variety of nondairy products

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