Survivor leads China’s milk industry
Sanyuan’s quality control system included third-party testing. And workers taste-drank every batch of milk products before the batch left the factory. Sanyuan attached great importance to quality, the company said.
Located in the capital city, Sanyuan had been, for more than three decades, a trusted milk supplier to many important places regularly, or on important occasions temporarily. This included Zhongnanhai, the seat of China’s central government.
The Beijing Olympic Games was another example. Sanyuan lost to Yili in bidding for sponsor’s supply. Yet, in mid-June it received orders for supplying dairy products to Olympics-related hotels, restaurants, media centers, and sports villages. Sanyuan apparently had not expected that. “Our reputation may be a factor,” Wang Dan said.
FLAWED SYSTEM AND FOOD SAFETY LAW
In the melamine scandal, some people blamed the graded standard for raw milk collecting. It enticed or forced, because of low prices, milking stations or farmers into illegal activities. Sanyuan’s Wang Dan defended the standard. Melamine dealing driven by the desire to make more money arose from the human weakness of avarice. The graded system should not be a scapegoat.
It was true that some cows raised by individual households produced milk of inferior quality that might be rejected, or paid a price not sufficient to cover the cost. But that was not an excuse for melamine dealing. The solution would be that for some areas where local environmental conditions were adverse for dairy farms, cows should be given up for other, more suitable investments; and where the environment was promising, large-scale operation should be encouraged to aid adoption of technology and equipment to ensure quality control.
“Scattered household cow raising poses a high risk to the safety of dairy products,” said Sanyuan Luhe executive deputy manager Qiao Lu. Scaled and standardized operation of dairy farms are expected to get help from the central government’s newly announced reform resolution to allow rural residents a freer use of land they leased from the state authority.
A new, dedicated method to detect melamine has been widely adopted by milk producers. But a question remains. Given the length of time and scope of melamine malpractice, it has virtually become an open secret in the industry. The testing and quality check personnel can’t have been completely ignorant or innocent. An explanation is that the milk company’s rapidly expanding business scales leads to a shortage of milk sources, which forces them to collect milk loosely, turning a blind eye to poor quality raw milk.
Tags: dairy, industry, milk