Wine sector fights back rumor amid milk scare
China’s Kweichow Moutai Co. Ltd, the distiller of country’s famed Maotai liquor, refuted a report stating that its liquor contains the cancer-linked nitrites in an announcement on Wednesday, China Securities Journal reports.
The move comes against the backdrop of a nationwide milk scare after the products of many of the country’s leading dairy brands were found to contain melamine.
A report by an unidentified website stated that the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, China’s quality watchdog, has found the products by many of the country’s famous liquor and wine brands contain nitrites following a nationwide quality check that has mowed down big names in the dairy sector including Yili Industrial Group, Mengniu Group and the Bright Dairy & Food.
Affected by the news, the share prices of China’s liquor and wine sector on the Shanghai Stock Exchange witnessed an avalanche which saw much of the shares falling to or near the daily limit on Tuesday.
The Guizhou-based Kweichow Moutai and Shandong-based Changyu Pioneer Wine Co. Ltd are among the first companies in the sector to brave the news by a clarifying announcement.
The Maotai distiller pasted an announcement on its website saying that the company has exchanged messages with quality supervision bodies at state and provincial level immediately after the “faked report” surfaced and cited the report as “groundless.”
Yantai Changyu Pioneer Wine Co. Ltd, producer of the famed Changyu wine, echoed the Maotai distiller by clarifying that the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine did not conduct any random sample inspections on its products recently.
Nitrite, a chemical widely used as a food preservative, is harmful to human health in large doses and is believed to be linked with cancer.
Tags: milk, Wine