WHO: Milk Scandal Deplorable

ZHANG:
And ongoing coverage of China's tainted milk scandal. The World Health Organization or WHO, says that deliberate delays in reporting the situation escalated China's contaminated milk powder scandal.

STORY:
The WHO and UNICEF called the scandal "deplorable" as more countries in Asia and Europe banned imports of Chinese milk products.

Beijing is battling public alarm and international dismay after four Chinese children died, and close to 13,000 crowded hospitals, sick from infant milk formula tainted with melamine. The chemical is used in the industry to cheat quality checks.

[Dr. Hans Troedsson, WHO Representative, China]:
"There's still an investigation going on if it's due to ignorance or if it was a deliberate failure to report. The investigation so far conducted by the government, and the WHO has been briefed is that it seems to be a combination of ignorance and deliberate failure to report.

An investigation has found that Sanlu Group, which is at the center of the scandal, began receiving customer complaints about its milk powder as long ago as last December.

WHO Says a better system is needed in China to step up food safety.

Jorgen Schlundt, WHO Food Safety Department]:
"What we are doing from WHO now is to try to help member-states including China to decide what are the levels of concern - when is that OK for the low level of contamination, and when we do get to higher level, that is a level of concern, we need to act, we need to take the products off shelves, so that nobody get sick from them. We are doing that in a very urgent risk assessment fashion.

China's poor track record in coming clean on past product safety scandals including toys, toothpaste, pharmaceutical and pet food ingredients has seriously dented the country's credibility.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Ntd
• NTDTV
• News
• Beijing
• China
• formula
• tainted
• infant
• Milk
• melamine
• chemical
• scandal
• investigation
• WHO
• UNICEF
• hospitals

[kristine876]

you guys should look into allot of things that are consumed in this world.. eg. aspartime, saccarine etc....

[Plutonwolf]

To continue to purchase and consume Chinese export food products is pure undiluted insanity until massive reforms are enactedin the inspection protocols used in the Chinese food production industry.

Their pharmaceuticals are nothing to brag about either.

Cheap, fast and sloppy is not the way to grow the market kids, people tend to remember when you kill their children, relatives, friends and pets.