Bear's Blog New Zealand (Beta)

This blog does not contain melamine.

Just something fun from chinese blogsphere.

The stamp is a parody of the tainted milk scandal in China. Chinese characters in the picture means "this blog does not contain melamine. Approved by General Administration Responsible to Grant Quality Supervision Exemption(a parody of China’s General Administration of Quality Supervision).

Related news(Chinese): To restore consumer confidence, a "no melamine was found in this product" sticker is added to the cover of all dairy products produced before September 18th.

Another victim...

The milk scandal in China is possibly  hitting the consumer confidence there harder than expected. Dairy products from milk to ice cream are all found to be contaminated.

The white rabbit creamy lolly has been one of the most popular lolly in China, and has been found of being contaminated by melamine.

Most people born between 70s - 90s in China, including myself, consumed the "white rabbit" at some stage of their lives. I even brought it once here in New Zealand - they are more than lollies, they are ... how should I put this, a kind of your childhood memory.

If this brand also falls in the scandal, I really don't know what food is actually safe in China - I can assure you that this is not an isolated food safety case. People deliberately add all sorts chemicals to nearly every type of food, and we've been eating those everyday.

This country needs to have a serious consideration on its economic development policy - it just CANNOT override other things like food safety - enough is enough.

4 dead, director arrested.

Questions still remain for the contaminated milk powder scandal. How melamine got into the baby milk powder is still a bit of mystery, although Chinese police has arrested several dairy farmers, alleging them of adding that chemical to the raw milk.

But melamine is almost insolvent to water. If it was added in the raw milk stage, it is hard to believe that San Lu does not have any knowledge on it, as the precipitation will almost occur in the milk.

San Lu, the producer has a motive to add melamine to the milk in the production stage because it gives the end product a false high protein reading. But this possibility is not publicly investigated at the moment.

Just some facts you may be interested to know ...

• Melamine was later found in varies milk powder products, including some reputable Chinese brand.
• However, San Lu's product got an extremely high reading (2000+ mg/kg), compare with 100 or less mg/kg in other products)
• Only one type of  San Lu milk powder product was found to be "contaminated".  It is the cheapest of its type in the market.
• San Lu products were granted exemption from state quality surveillance inspection because of its "excellent performance".

So did San Lu or dairy farmers deliberately added melamine into the milk powder? In my opinion, the short answer is yes, with a long answer "no". San Lu, like nearly everybody else, adds bit of high tech stuff like melamine into their products. But there's no need to boost protein % by add 2000+ mg/kg melamine, so something must gone wrong in the process, which probably San Lu's QCs have no knowledge of.

contaminated milk powder

I just need to turn your attention to China.  Since last month, babies in several Chinese provinces fall ill after long time consumption of Sanlu baby powder. Most babies have stones in their kidneys, and several were confirmed died of this cause.

The milk powder was found contaminated with a chemical called melamine .It is mainly used to made plastic materials, but there are previous cases that some businesses have used this chemical to get the protein level for their product to appear higher as is rich in nitrogen. So you cannot rule out the possibility that somebody, or the Sanlu itself, deliberately added the chemcial into the powder.

The sign of "contamination" appeared as early as march this year, but there was not public reaction from any party, including fonterra, until last week when all the contamination chemicals have been recalled.

Sanlu, a Chinese based company, is partially owned by Fonterra (43%). I don't think there is a need for me to explain what Fonterra is to New Zealand readers.

Fonterra's involvement in this issue is still not very clear. As far as I understand, the contaminated milk powder was processed from 100% Chinese produced materials, i.e. no New Zealand materials were used.

But that's far from enough, I want to know whether Fonterra knew anything before the contamination made public, whether they have done enough to stop contaminated milk powder from entering the market.

According to today's New Zealand Herald Report, the answer from Fonterra, is yes ... which I don't believe in. I want to get independent report on Fonterra's involvement, and it really sickens me that PM and trade minister defended Fonterra before the investigation - what would them react if more than 500 New Zealand baby were poisoned by milk powder made by a company with 43% of shares owned by Chinese?

An unpleasant reminder

Today is exactly four month after the 8.0Ms earthquake which killed more than 80,000 people in Sichuan Province, China.

Aftershocks were seem to be finally dying out in just few weeks ago. But If a demon like creature really exist, it sure knows when to come out - there were at least 3 M 4.0+ aftershocks recorded since yesterday, the largest one happened early this morning, measured Mb 5.4 in northern part of Sichuan Province.

And my friends and family members in the province also reported countless number of small shocks - none of them were destructive, but sure reminded people what was happened four month ago.

Those aftershocks really worried me. The epicentre of one aftershock yesterday was only about 50km from the provincial capital, Chengdu(pop ~11m. , 4m. metropolitan), being the closest so far(it was first reported of being only 30km from Chengdu).

If a strong aftershock happens in the area the consequences would be catastrophic ... given that most people are tired of aftershocks and no one bothers to walk out of buildings when an aftershock happens.

The biggest one, Mb 5.4 this morning,  depth of that earthquake was only 6 km below the surface - it's an extremely shallow yet relatively strong quake, and I'm glad that the magnitude wasn't anything higher than 5.5. The region just cannot bear that kind of shallow quake again.

not bad, but just that.

It's weekend so I didn't mind to spent pretty much whole night to watch the Olympics opening ceremony.

I didn't expected a lot out of Director Zhang Yimou（张艺谋）,so I must say it was better than I expected.

It got lots of things in it, Four Great Inventions of ancient China, the great voyage of Zheng He, teachings from "Analects" ... etc.

I don't know, non-chinese may think them as very interesting, but at least I think, the performance lacked "real substances", just 2008 people wearing ancient chinese dress or tai-chi suit running around - without a objective.

TV ONE didn't prepare well for the live coverage, it lacked commentaries. Even I found it difficult to understand what are all those people running around suppose to mean; for people who have little or knowledge on Chinese history, I imagine there is no possibility that they well ever understand any parts of the ceremony.

What I liked was the first theme - use of drums to count down.  Great light effect, very majestic, yet it is still closely linked to Chinese culture - well, if my memory serves me right, drumming in the night, or dusk traditionally is a gesture of sending the deceased on the final journey, the road to burial.

Anyway, it's not too bad  though, TV ONE should have highlights today, have look if you got time, or here.