The China melamine milk scandal and its implications for food safety regulation

Knowledge, attitudes and behaviour regarding nutrition and dietary intake of seventh-grade students in rural areas of Mi Yun County, Beijing, China

“…Various reports have blamed weak and fragmented regulatory controls, poor agricultural and veterinary practices, small-scale-and thus difficult to control-production of food and agricultural products, adulteration in food production processes, widespread corruption and unregulated pursuit of profits. One example of such a report is the Greenpeace report on excessive levels of poisonous pesticides in certain vegetables (April 2006), and various incidents on food quality include the discovery by Wuhan inspectors that blood pudding sold in Chinese markets was composed mainly of corn starch, formaldehyde, industrial grade salt and food colouring (2009), findings by Chinese officials of the illegal use of drugs in fish farming (December 2006) and the outbreak of melamine-adulterated milk and powered infant formula (2008) that affected about 300,000 babies and resulted in at least six infant deaths [51,52]. Our data indicate the emerging consumer awareness of food safety issues among young people serve as a reminder to Chinese authorities trying to deal with food safety issues [53].…”

Risk management of Chinese food companies; a management perspective

“…They argued that the Chinese quality control system assumes that the removal of low quality end products is the major part of safety management, which is in accordance with the UN's (2008) statement that "enforcement in China of food control places an excessive reliance on end-product testing with very little use of auditing as an inspection tool", and this is further confirmed by Broughton and Walker (2010). Pei et al (2011) hence concluded that China's system is not a good system for safety management, and needs improvement. Lv (2011), on the other hand, investigated the flaws in the current Patent Law of China and found that a more stringent Patent Law could help prevent food safety issues emerging by rejecting the patent application that is purposely changing or hiding food substances.…”

“…As mentioned by Pei et al (2011), one of the weak points of China's food safety system has often been claimed to be the lack of trained personnel, and in order to make up for this shortage the Chinese government has endeavoured to establish and reinforce training schemes.…”

“…Bai et al (2007) explored food safety assurance systems in China and argued that stringent government legislation can indeed be successful in pressurising the large food firms to produce safe food due to their high public visibility, but the food safety issue of millions of small food firms can only be solved by encouraging voluntary implementation of the legislation. More recently, Pei et al (2011) compared the EU and Chinese systems of food safety regulation for dairies and noted that the Chinese system concentrates more on end-products while the EU quality assurance approach is arguably more robust as it considers risks throughout the food chain. They argued that the Chinese quality control system assumes that the removal of low quality end products is the major part of safety management, which is in accordance with the UN's (2008) statement that "enforcement in China of food control places an excessive reliance on end-product testing with very little use of auditing as an inspection tool", and this is further confirmed by Broughton and Walker (2010).…”

Treatment of Melamine by GAC Adsorption According to Adsorbent Size: Kinetics and Dispersion-Diffusion

“…The China milk scandal of 2008, in which milk products were tainted with melamine, generated a significant amount of worry and nervousness around the globe (Xiu and Klein, 2010;Pei et al, 2011). Consumption of melamine can cause kidney stones, and acute melamine toxicity can be fatal (Dobson et al, 2008;Puschner et al, 2007).…”