{"id":33444,"date":"2013-04-11T21:27:00","date_gmt":"2013-04-11T21:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1:10081\/?p=33444 "},"modified":"2013-04-11T21:27:00","modified_gmt":"2013-04-11T21:27:00","slug":"33444-revision-v1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/?p=33444","title":{"rendered":"Baby milk rationing: Chinese fears spark global restrictions"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Worried mothers in China are going to great lengths to get their hands on imported milk, causing retailers in the UK and elsewhere to ration sales.<\/div>
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When a child is born in China, anxious new parents often prize one gift above all others: imported formula baby milk, usually hand-carried from overseas to ensure it’s the real thing.<\/div>
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Fearful of the dangerous levels of hormones and chemicals sometimes found in Chinese baby formula, parents in mainland China often go to great lengths to secure foreign brands.<\/div>
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“My child only drank formula that was posted from Japan by my cousin who was studying there,” explains Liu Fang in Beijing, the mother of a three-year-old boy.<\/div>
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Ms Fang says she imported baby formula from Japan and the US for her son<\/div>
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“When the Japanese nuclear power plant leaked, my son drank American formula which was mailed from the US.”<\/div>
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Long-term breastfeeding is rare among Chinese mothers, who often doubt the quality of their breast milk.<\/div>
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Those who can afford it choose to buy imported formula over Chinese brands.<\/div>
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Tainted history<\/div>
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Most parents believe they have good reason to be worried.<\/div>
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In 2008, six infants died of severe kidney damage and an estimated 300,000 babies suffered painful kidney stones after drinking tainted baby formula.<\/div>
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Continue reading the main story<\/div>
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Even if there is only a 1% chance that Chinese formula is not safe, I don’t want to be that 1%”<\/div>
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Ms Li<\/div>
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After testing, formula from several major Chinese dairy companies was found to contain melamine, an additive that falsely boosts the protein levels in milk.<\/div>
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Since then, a regular stream of similar food safety crises has served to underline many parents’ belief that food products stamped “Made in China” are unsafe for children.<\/div>
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Almost every product on Chinese supermarket shelves has been tainted by some sort of scandal in recent years, including bacteria-laden pork that glows in the dark and repackaged cooking oil siphoned from the gutters outside restaurants.<\/div>
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Milk formula scandals also continue to hit China’s headlines.<\/div>
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In December 2011 and July 2012, two Chinese companies, Mengniu and Ava Dairy, recalled baby formula containing high amounts of aflatoxin, a carcinogen produced by fungus in cows’ feed.<\/div>
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Last June, a third company, Yili Group, issued a separate recall after “unusually high” levels of mercury were found in its main line of infant milk powder.<\/div>
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Growing demand<\/div>
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A British mother describes her worry and frustration about finding baby milk in the UK<\/div>
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The result? China’s so-called “4-2-1 families”, made up of four grandparents and two parents doting on a single child, pool their money and scour the globe for safe sources of food.<\/div>
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Some buy imported baby formula from online stores, which regularly post photos displaying walls of baby formula amassed from overseas.<\/div>
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“My warehouse is full of baby formula!” posted one online seller who calls herself Sunshine Grass.<\/div>
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“My husband purchased it in Canada and packed it himself, so it’s definitely not fake.”<\/div>
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One common brand of milk powder, Enfrapro, costs approximately $22 (£14) per tin in Canada but re-sells for an average of $44 on Taobao, a popular online retailer in China.<\/div>
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Global impact<\/div>
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Mainland Chinese have been flocking to Hong Kong to buy baby milk<\/div>
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The prospect of huge profits available to formula sellers in China has had a knock-on effect for retailers around the world.<\/div>
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Hong Kong’s government was the first one to put a limit on purchases, not surprisingly given its proximity to China and the number of Chinese that travel there for shopping.<\/div>
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It has prevented all customers from purchasing more than two cans of formula a day. Those caught breaking the rules face up to two years in prison and a $64,500 fine.<\/div>
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But the growing Chinese demand is now beginning to have an impact on countries outside Asia.<\/div>
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Retailers in Australia and the UK have followed suit, limiting the number of cans of formula that can be sold to a customer within a single day.<\/div>
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Winning back trust<\/div>
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The Chinese government is attempting to solve the baby formula problem at home by strengthening its food monitoring system.<\/div>
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Last month, Beijing elevated the political status of the country’s food and drug watchdog, in the hope that parents would learn to trust the products produced within China.<\/div>
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So far, the plan has done little to calm concerns.<\/div>
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Standing outside Beijing’s largest maternity hospital, a woman who is expecting her first child in August looks frustrated when asked how she plans to feed her unborn child.<\/div>
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“We can’t find imported milk. It was easier a couple of months ago, but now I heard Chinese Customs are getting stricter,” frets Ms Li, refusing to disclose her first name.<\/div>
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“Even if there is only a 1% chance that Chinese formula is not safe, I don’t want to be that 1%.”<\/div>
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 <\/div>Continue reading <\/span><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>the<\/span><\/a> <\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>original article<\/a><\/a><\/a>.<\/a><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/a><\/span> <\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/strong>
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<div>Fearful of the dangerous levels of hormones and chemicals sometimes found in Chinese baby formula, parents in mainland China often go to great lengths to secure foreign brands.<\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ChinaHumanRights","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33444\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}