Abreast of the melamine milk scandal

Result #3 for Google image search for 牛奶 (milk)

Yesterday, The China Daily reported that the melamine tainted milk scandal gas widened beyond the Sanlu brand to include some of the industry's biggest names in China:

Till Monday, only Sanlu products were found with melamine, but tests conducted over the past week showed that 69 of the 491 batches were contaminated, said the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ)...

...Apart from Hebei-based Sanlu Group, the firms whose products are contaminated include such dairy giants as the Yili and Mengniu groups, both based in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, and Shanghai-based Bright Dairy...

...The Guangdong-based Yashili Group is the only tainted firm to have exported some products to Bangladesh, Yemen and Myanmar, the report said. But tests on the export batch samples found no melamine.

The death toll so far from melamine tainted milk is 3, with 6,244 babies sickened. The scandal has caused some anguish on the Chinese Internet. Here are a few translated comments to a post titled 'Do you accept Sanlu's apology?' on the popular Tianya forum:

sherron84: I don't know how much money the scapegoat took...

Wangming Sanmao: This is a classic performance by government officials and businessmen. The end result will be that the government pays money, peasants go to jail, the companies resume their business, the people who pay tax foot the bill, and children get to endure hardship.

beilangX: Don't fucking treat us as a silent majority!

First chicken then egg: Boycott Chinese products!

Mingyue Guangbai: How are we supposed to support Chinese products if they are like this!

billow631: Lock up Sanlu's leaders. Don't give them anything to eat except their own milk powder.

The government have started to act on that last suggestion. Xinhua reported last night that several more arrests have been made of government officials and other people responsible for the crisis, including Tian Wenhua, former board chairwoman and general manager of Sanlu Group who was fired by the company on Tuesday this week.

Meanwhile, the author of a Tianya post titled 'In the midst of the powdered milk scandal, a deficiency of breast milk', apparently a young mother, argues that Chinese women should be encouraged to breast feed rather than give their babies formulae.

Oddly enough, at the end of August, the Southern Daily published an article on this issue headlined '9 out of 10 new mothers don't have enough breast milk' (translated at the Danwei link below).