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For crying out loud: Babies and tainted milk in China
Photo via Daily Mail
By now, the tainted baby milk scandal in China is old news, but still, it is a story that continues to develop. So before you get bored of the coverage, get informed:
Derek Kravitz of Washington Post Investigations provides a good overview, including the following points:
At least 10 African and Asian countries have ceased importing Chinese dairy products.
China’s chief quality supervisor, Li Changjiang, resigned yesterday. The Post’s Maureen Fan reports that his office allowed the dairy company behind the tainted powdered milk, Sanlu Group, to be exempt from safety inspections.
Investigators in China say the dairy company added melamine to its products to boost profits.
The public anger over the tainted milk scandal forced government officials to offer financial aid and allow for public debate, a major departure on the part of the regime.
To read the full text with hyperlinks, click here.
This whole issue triggers a flashback of when I started ResponsibleChina.com one year ago, in the midst of tainted food, toxic toy and corrupt drug scandals. And then, in the fallout, there were even spin-off fake stories about bogus buns.
So what has China learned since then?
The blogger at A Mind Lost says this:
China has grown in recent years at a ridiculous rate. They are having to learn the lessons learned in other advanced economies much faster than anyone else had to and this is causing an enormous amount of greed. They clearly haven’t yet learned the lessons from last year’s lead-painted toy fiasco that if they short-cut the specifications for a product, it will go wrong and they will get caught out.
Greed? Is that really the culprit? Or is it negligence? A combination of both? Ignorance, perhaps?
Paul Maidment at Forbes offers a more analytical perspective:
The scandal comes after more than a year of extensive efforts by the central government to improve the monitoring and enforcement of product safety standards in the wake of a series of scares last year related to food, toys, tires, toothpaste and other Chinese exports. Melamine is the same chemical as was found in contaminated pet-food exports last year that caused scores of U.S. animals to die.
It shows how shallow roots those reforms have taken, and that the first instinct to cover up problems holds a strong grip, at least at the local and provincial level. The lessons of the attempted coverup of the SARS outbreak in 2002, Harbin’s river of benzene in 2005 and last year’s product safety scandals may have been learned at the top, but they have not trickled down far. That said, even the regulatory response of central government to the formula crisis has been after the fact.
Indeed, the Chinese government has been slow to act. “A product recall for the baby formula didn’t start until last week, even though Sanlu received complaints about the milk powder in March, and the first death suspected to be connected to the product occurred in May,” Forbes reports.
The solution? China needs a crash course in crisis management.
Clearly, product safety standards in the dairy industry are symbolic and consumers need to have their confidence restored in what is or is not safe to eat and feed to their babies. That means doing something unfamiliar in China, but which is the 101 of reputation crisis management in the West: Get all the bad news out as honestly and quickly as possible.
Otherwise, as we are seeing, when these crises blow open, they blow wide open and only remind the rest of the world why they remain suspicious of Chinese products.
The writer at Forbes isn’t the only one that shares this perspective. Jim Yardley at The New York Times offers similar reporting:
Chinese regulators have repeatedly failed to detect food safety problems in a timely manner. Moreover, despite ample evidence that secrecy tends to compound safety problems, companies and local officials still appear determined to minimize or cover up problems in the food supply rather than alert the public.
As an editorial in New Zealand’s Dominion Post says, “Transparency might have a short-term downside but buys respect in the longer term,” referring to Fronterra, the global food cooperative that partnered with Sanlu to manufacture the tainted formula.
Imagethief agrees that “suppressing the news is not a PR solution.” The blog says the (sort of) “winner” in this situation is Sanlu, because “all of a sudden what looked like their problem is a nationwide problem in which they are just one of many companies caught in the riptide.” The “losers,” though, are everyone else: “Consumers have no idea which domestic manufacturers they can trust.”
Who’s responsible for fixing this mess?
Imagethief says, “The Chinese government needs to explain why there is a pervasive problem in the dairy industry and what it is doing to solve the situation.”
The situation has already deteriorated. The sooner it moves into recovery phase the better. More bad news dribbling out over weeks and months will delay the start of the recovery and stoke the fires of suspicion and anger. This is one reason why it’s important to make sure people have enough real information to forestall the worst of the gossip and conspiracy theorizing.
So, bottom line, China needs to get real, be honest, educate the public and its business partners, and finally, find concrete, lasting solutions to consumer product safety regulations.
Check out China Law Blog‘s compilation of posts about ensuring quality and safety of Chinese products, especially for foreign companies who are outsourcing Chinese goods. Some of its suggestions include the following:
- Increased vigilance, at the cost of low prices
- Strengthening a sense of trust between supplier relationships
- Conducting due diligence on manufacturers, using good contracts, and conducting inspections of products
- “Trust but verify”
Does anyone else have any more solutions?
Tags: Discussion
2 comments for “For crying out loud: Babies and tainted milk in China”
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Erica
“China needs to get real, be honest, educate the public and its business partners, and finally, find concrete, lasting solutions to consumer product safety regulations.”
I wouldn’t hold my breath! Since the government has its hands in all pies, coverup is its first natural instinct.
We’re talking about people who poison babies for profit, and are only sorry to have gotten caught.
When I brought up quality control and social responsibility in a Chinese business class last year following the lead-toy scandal, the students were incredulous. After all, it was foreigners’ problem, and also, the government had assured them that leaden toys was actually not much of a problem. In short? What’s the problem? An opportunity missed.
Dare I repeat that reaction to them today? Not if I want to keep my job.
Rather than wait for Chinese manufacturers to learn the lesson, what if we as consumers learn the lesson about Chinese manufacturing.
Not to impose in the comments section, but an addendum to the above comment:
Last night I brought up this issue in another Chinese business class here in Shanghai. Very neutrally and supportively, I asked the group to tell what they heard about it, and how they felt about it.
No one spoke. It’s my experience that this is either:
a) Reluctance to speak critically in front of a group, especially with a “laowai” present
b) Lack of opinion due to no direct experience with the issue
c) Tacit acceptance, since profit is God.
Two students ventured timid opinions:
When asked how would you feel if it were your baby, one girl said “…mad?”
And another student excused Sanlu saying that it was probably not their fault.
This type of response is quite typical in my experience: the excusing of injustice and lack of active responsibility for social problems.
In other words, China’s brand of collectivism excuses personal accountability, and thrives on being uninformed – but the people *want* it that way.
These are the same folks who thrive due to American consumers, but would happily ask America to kill itself. Never recognizing their own dependency, until the farmers were rioting in the streets, and the country could collectively blame its foreign scapegoats.
Caveat Emptor.