2008 chinese milk scandal 2008 chinese milk scandal the 2008 chinese milk scandal was a significant food safety incident in china. the scandal involved sanlu group's milk and infant formula along with other food materials and components being adulterated with the chemical melamine, which resulted in kidney stones and other kidney damage in infants. the chemical was used to increase the nitrogen content of diluted milk, giving it the appearance of higher protein content in order to pass quality control testing. 300,000 affected children were identified, among which 54,000 were hospitalized, according to the latest report in january 2009. the deaths of six babies were officially concluded to be related to the contaminated milk. empty milk shelf in a carrefour supermarket in china as a result of the scandal the timeline of the scandal dated back to december 2007, when sanlu began to receive complaints about kidney stones. one of the more notable early complaints was made on 20 may 2008, when a mother posted online after she learnt that sanlu donated the milk she had been complaining about to the orphans of the 2008 sichuan earthquake. also on 20 may, the problem reached sanlu's board meeting the first time and they ordered multiple third-party tests. the culprit, melamine, was undetected in the tests until 1 august. on 2 august, sanlu's board decided to issue a trade recall to the wholesalers but did not inform the wholesalers the product was contaminated; however, shijiazhuang's deputy mayor, who was invited to attend, rejected trade recall and instructed the board to "shut the mouths of the victims by money", "wait until the end of 2008 beijing olympics to end smoothly and then the provincial police would hunt the perpetrators". new zealand dairy giant fonterra, which owned a 43% stake in sanlu, were alerted to the contamination on 2 august's board meeting. fonterra alerted the new zealand government and the nz government confronted the chinese government on 8 september. the chinese government made the scandal public on 13 september. after the initial focus on sanlu, further government inspections revealed that products from 21 other companies were also tainted, including those from arla foods–mengniu, yili, and yashili. while more and more cases reached hospitals around the nation from december 2007, the first report to the government by any hospital was made on 16 july. the issue raised concerns about food safety and political corruption in china and damaged the reputation of the country's food exports. the world health organization called the incident "deplorable" and at least 11 foreign countries halted all imports of chinese dairy products. a number of trials were conducted by the chinese government resulting in two executions, three sentences of life imprisonment, two 15-year prison sentences, and the firing or forced resignation of seven local government officials and the director of the administration of quality supervision, inspection and quarantine (aqsiq). the former chairwoman of china's sanlu dairy was sentenced to life in prison. in late october 2008, similar adulteration with melamine was discovered in eggs and possibly other food. the source was traced to melamine being added to animal feed, despite a ban imposed in june 2007 following the scandal over pet food ingredients exported to the united states. melamine melamine is used to manufacture melamine-formaldehyde resin, a type of plastic known for its flame-retardant properties and commonly employed in countertops, dry-erase boards, etc. it has also been employed as a non-protein nitrogen, appearing in soy meal, corn gluten meal and cottonseed meal used in cattle feed. melamine is known to cause kidney failure and kidney stones in humans and animals when it reacts with cyanuric acid inside the body. the use of melamine in food production is not approved by the world health organization (who) or national authorities. melamine is nitrogen-rich, so it is sometimes illegally added to food products to increase their apparent protein content. the kjeldahl and dumas methods used to test for protein levels fail to distinguish between nitrogen in melamine and naturally occurring nitrogen in amino acids, allowing the protein levels to be falsified. introduced into milk, it can help conceal fraudulent dilution with water. melamine adulteration of food products also made headlines when pet food was recalled in europe and the u.s. in 2007. source of contamination the world health organization (who) said melamine may be found "in a variety of milk and milk products at varying levels, from low ppb to ppm ranges". one academic suggested cyromazine, a melamine derivative pesticide commonly used in china for a long time, is absorbed into plants as melamine; it may therefore have long been present in products such as poultry, eggs, fish, and dairy products. it is not known where in the supply chain the melamine was added to the milk. the chemical is not water-soluble, and must be mixed with formaldehyde or another chemical before it can be dissolved in milk. because of poor animal husbandry, production and storage and the demand for milk far outstripping supplies, the use of other potentially harmful chemical additives such as preservatives and hydrogen peroxide has been reported by independent media as being commonplace. quality tests can be falsified with additives: peroxide is added to prevent milk from going bad; industrial vegetable oil is emulsified and added to boost fat levels; whey is used to increase lactose content. however, the procurement chain is also implicated, as milk agents are often politically well-connected. farmers report salespeople had, for years, been visiting farms in dairy areas hawking "protein powder" additives, which would often be delivered in unmarked brown paper bags of 25 kilograms (55 lb) each. thus, farmers either added melamine contaminant unwittingly, or turned a blind eye to milk adulteration to ensure their milk was not rejected. the big dairy producers were complicit in producing "test-tube milk". caijing reported in 2008 that hebei dairy farmers had been aware of the practice of "spiking fresh milk with additives such as melamine" since 2006. because of fierce competition for supplies, and the higher prices paid by mengniu and yili, sanlu's procurement became squeezed; its inspection system became compromised by 2005, which "allowed milk collection stations to adopt unscrupulous business practices", compounded by a complete lack of government supervision. caijing also reported the melamine in the tainted milk may have come from scrap melamine costing ¥700 per tonne—less than one-tenth of the price of 99% pure industrial grade melamine. the melamine production process produces pure melamine by crystallisation; the melamine remaining in the mother liquor is impure (70%) and unusable for plastics, so it is scrapped. it said sanlu's baby formula melamine content was a result of tampering by adding low-cost vegetable protein (such as low-grade soya powder), and large amounts of scrap melamine as filler. scrap melamine contains impurities such as cyanuric acid that form more insoluble crystals (melamine cyanurate) than melamine alone, aggravating the problem. victims on 17 september 2008, health minister chen zhu stated tainted milk formula had "sickened more than 6,200 children, and that more than 1,300 others, mostly newborns, remain hospitalized with 158 suffering from acute kidney failure". by 23 september, about 54,000 children were reported to be sick and four had died. an additional 10,000 cases were reported from the provinces by 27 september. a world health organization official said 82% of the children made ill were 2 years of age or below. the hong kong centre for food safety said that 99 percent of the victims were aged under 3 years. ten hong kong children were diagnosed with kidney problems, at least four cases were detected in macau, and six in taiwan. non-human casualties included a lion cub and two baby orangutans which had been fed sanlu infant formula at hangzhou zoo. the government said on 8 october it would no longer issue updated figures "because it is not an infectious disease, so it's not absolutely necessary for us to announce it to the public". reuters compiled figures reported by local media across the country, and said the toll stood at nearly 94,000 at the end of september, excluding municipalities. notably, 13,459 children had been affected in gansu, reuters quoted xinhua saying henan had reported over 30,000 cases, and hebei also had nearly 16,000 cases. in late october, the government announced health officials had surveyed 300,000 beijing families with children less than 3 years old. it disclosed approximately 74,000 families had a child who had been fed melamine-tainted milk, but did not reveal how many of those children had fallen ill as a result. because of the many months before the scandal was exposed, the media suggest the official figures are likely to be understated. kidney stones in infants started being reported in several parts of china in the past two years. a number of yet-to-be-officially-acknowledged cases were reported by the media. however, those deaths without an official verdict may be denied compensation. on 1 december, xinhua reported that the ministry of health revised the number of victims to more than 290,000 with 51,900 hospitalized; authorities acknowledged receiving reports of 11 suspected deaths from melamine contaminated powdered milk from provinces, but officially confirmed three deaths. on characterisation and treatment of urinary stones in affected infants, the new england journal of medicine printed an editorial in march 2009, along with reports on cases from beijing, hong kong and taipei. urinary calculi specimens were collected from 15 cases treated in beijing and were analysed as unknown objects for their components at beijing institute of microchemistry using infrared spectroscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance, and high-performance liquid chromatography. the result of the analyses showed the calculi were composed of melamine and uric acid, and the molecular ratio of uric acid to melamine was around 2:1. in a study published in 2010, researchers from peking university studying ultrasound images of infants who fell ill in the 2008 contamination found while most children in a rural chinese area recovered, 12 percent still showed kidney abnormalities six months later. "the potential for long-term complications after exposure to melamine remains a serious concern", the report said. "our results suggest a need for further follow-up of affected children to evaluate the possible long-term impact on health, including renal function." companies contaminated products found in the china aqsis tests include baby formula products produced by the following companies, in order of highest concentration found. shijiazhuang sanlu group, shanghai panda dairy, qingdao shengyuan dairy, shanxi gu cheng dairy, jiangxi guangming yingxiong dairy, baoji huimin dairy, inner mongolia mengniu dairy, torador dairy industry (tianjin), guangdong yashili group, hunan peiyi dairy, heilongjiang qilin dairy, shanxi yashili dairy, shenzhen jinbishi milk, scient (guangzhou) infant nutrition, guangzhou jinding dairy products factory, inner mongolia yili industrial group, yantai ausmeadow nutriment, qingdao suncare nutritional technology, xi'an baiyue dairy, yantai leilei dairy, shanghai baoanli dairy, and fuding chenguan dairy. sanlu the scandal began with revelations of contamination of sanlu milk products. the new zealand dairy cooperative fonterra, which owned a 43% stake in sanlu, said they were alerted to melamine contamination on 2 august (almost a month before the issue became public), and have said to have pushed hard for a full public recall. although there was an immediate trade recall, fonterra said that local administrators refused an official recall. a fonterra director had given sanlu management a document detailing the european union's permitted levels of melamine, but fonterra chief executive andrew ferrier has stated that at no time did fonterra say small amounts of melamine were acceptable. warning signs ignored from 2005 to 2006, an agent, jiang weisuo, from shaanxi jinqiao dairy company in northwest china reportedly publicly discussed his fears about unauthorised substances being added to competitors' milk. his complaints to regulators and dairy makers in 2005 and 2006 never yielded any result; his story was picked up by china central television, who ran a report complete with footage of adulteration in progress, yet the shaanxi quality and technical supervision bureau said they failed to find evidence of wrongdoing. the bulletin board of the administration of quality supervision, inspection and quarantine (aqsiq) indicated a rare occurrence of kidney stones in children–all causally traced to sanlu milk formula–was flagged by at least one member of the public in june 2008 and by a urologist in a paediatric hospital on 24 july 2008. neither received definitive replies. the paediatrician, who specifically asked the aqsiq to