China Milk Crisis Essay

In the aftermath of the 2008 Melamine Milk Crisis in China, there were some interesting facts and consequences that came to light. China also continued to have issues over this scandal in 2010 (China’s melamine, 2010). One of the larger issues revealed, was that the practice of contaminating milk with melamine was not limited to just the Sanlu Group. In fact, it was a fairly regular practice nation-wide as China is the number one manufacture of melamine and shares close relationships with the dairy industry (Keck, 2009). High-level executives were directly affected by this crisis. Mengniu and Yilin are considered the face of the baby milk formula product and actually held wide-scale public events where they consumed milk to assure their

This showed the severity of the problem (Keck, 2009). It also caused Starbucks to remove their products including soya milk (Keck, 2009). Both the United States and Great Britain also discovered melamine in food products linked to China (Keck, 2009). China had to deal with major overcrowding issues in hospitals due to all the health issues caused by the melamine. They set up 18 facilities specifically to conduct kidney examinations and also created a hotline (Keck, 2009). As the government continued its investigation and response, more disturbing evidence surfaced. Melamine was now discovered in deserts and also from eggs imported from Dalian (Keck, 2009). This further realized the egg infection affected the entire food chain with an emphasis on animal products (Keck, 2009). This has been linked to the high number of dog deaths in the United States in 2007. These crises ultimately lead to other nations such as New Zealand and Australia benefiting from a higher demand of importing milk products (Keck, 2009). There was also evidence based on geographical areas where the infected milk ended up that it was targeted towards lower class nations (Keck, 2009). The large-scale crisis also caused rumors that China was suppressing evidence this impacted the Olympics of numerous complaints from athletes (Keck, 2009). In the end, the Chinese government announced 6 children had died and 300,00 more were