China Fires 8 Top Regulators Over Milk Scandal

SHANGHAI — China said Friday that eight senior regulators were fired last week for “slack supervision” in a tainted milk scandal that killed at least six children and sickened over 300,000 last year.

The government said high-ranking regulators in the country’s major food supervisory agencies, including the ministries of health and agriculture and the top food safety watchdog, were stripped of their positions and their membership in the Communist Party.

One of the highest officials to lose his job was Wang Bubu, chief of the law enforcement division of the General Administration of Quality Supervision and Quarantine.

The dismissals were Beijing’s latest efforts to strengthen food safety practices and hold government officials accountable after the worst food safety crisis here in decades.

The scandal dealt a huge blow to China’s dairy industry last year and also led to global recalls of Chinese-made food products, damaging international trade and further shaking confidence in this nation’s ability to monitor its food producers.

China arrested dozens of farmers, middlemen and dairy company executives last year, accusing them of violating the public trust. Some middlemen were accused of intentionally spiking milk supplies with melamine to save money, essentially using the toxic chemical as filler.

One major dairy company, the Sanlu Company, was forced into bankruptcy. Two men were sentenced to death for their role in the scandal earlier this year and several other people, including the 66-year-old chief executive of Sanlu, were sentenced to life in prison.

The punishments announced late Friday were handed down by the Communist Party watchdog, the Central Commission for Disciplinary Inspection.

Regulators in the State Administration for Industry and Commerce and the State Food and Drug Administration were also punished. Last September, the chief of the General Administration of Quality Supervision and Quarantine and two high ranking officials in the city of Shijiazhuang, where Sanluwas based, were dismissed or stepped down.

Beijing has struggled to demonstrate that it is taking strong steps to improve food safety. But a four-month nationwide food safety campaign in late 2007 failed to prevent the milk scandal.

(NYT)

Fake drugs made in China flood into Britain

Counterfeiting gangs based in China are producing sophisticated copies of the world's bestselling pharmaceuticals. In 2008 an estimated 8m of these potentially deadly pills found their way to NHS patients. The health of millions of people is at risk

They were made in China, labelled in French and then shipped to Singapore. They ended up in Liverpool and from there were sold straight into the heart of the NHS(National Health Service). As the criminal investigation continues into how a fake consignment of Zyprexa, an anti-psychotic treatment prescribed for schizophrenia, infiltrated Britain's healthcare system last year, evidence is mounting that sophisticated counterfeiting syndicates are increasingly targeting Britain's network of high-street chemists, hospitals and GP surgeries.

Figures collated for the first time reveal that British border officials seized more than half a million counterfeit pills destined for the NHS and high-street chemists last year, an amount equal to the quantity of counterfeit drugs found in the whole of Europe in 2005. So vast is the scale of the threat from fake medicines that public confidence in the NHS could be "completely undermined", according to legal experts. Health officials also warn that the health of millions of Britons is potentially at risk.

More than £3m of fake life-saving medicines for ailments such as heart disease and cancer were intercepted by customs officials and the Home Office border agency in the first 10 months of 2008. Three consignments were each larger than 100,000 pills.

In response, customs has upgraded tackling the trade in fake medicines to "high priority", the same urgency devoted to targeting heroin and cocaine dealers. Interpol recently revealed it was investigating reports that profits from counterfeit drugs are funding terrorist groups, including al-Qaida. Others warn that smuggling counterfeit drugs into Britain's healthcare network could prove to be a terrorist weapon in itself.

(Guardian)

Nike faces problems in China

HONG KONG - Nike Inc, the world's biggest sneaker and sportswear maker, said it found falsified documents, underage workers and unpaid wages at suppliers in China, despite what experts say is one of the top social compliance regimes in the industry.

The company's shares were down nearly 2 percent in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

The Oregon-based company's difficulties highlight the deep roots of some of the problems businesses face in manufacturing in China, particularly at a time of sharply rising costs and a stiffening legal environment.

In its first country-specific supply chain report, which it said focused on China because of the upcoming Beijing Olympics, Nike detailed the efforts it has been making to get suppliers to comply with its code of conduct and Chinese law, including a program to monitor Olympics-related suppliers this year.

The report noted problems including falsification of factory documents such as payroll records, lack of effective grievance systems for disgruntled workers and hiring practices that did not ensure minimum age standards were met.

The report said China is Nike's largest single sourcing country, with some 180 manufacturers and about 210,000 employees.

Last year, Nike rolled out a program to check the identity of some 150,000 of its workers in China and found 167 cases of people who were below minimum-age standards when they were hired but were now 18 or older. Two people were found to be underage.

Wages in some places were not tracking government-mandated raises, the report said.

"As multiple factors drive up the cost of business, we find that some contract factories try to avoid making changes to wages in a timely manner," the report said.

In 2005 and 2006, Nike "secured" over 6.53 million yuan ($921,300) in back wages owed to workers in China. Last year, it said it recovered more than 500,000 yuan in back pay.

Nike's shares were off $1.11, or 1.8 percent, to $59.92 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

(Reuters)

Dumplings Stir China Food Scare in Japan

• it increases already deep suspicions among consumers in Japan and elsewhere about the safety of Chinese foods.

TOKYO — Japanese supermarkets, restaurants and schools cleared Chinese food products from their shelves and kitchens Friday in a spiraling nationwide scare over insecticide-tainted dumplings.

The government said at least 10 people have fallen ill since December after eating imported dumplings produced by Tianyang Food Processing. Media reports said the number of victims could be as high as 500.

Officials said the insecticide, which is not approved for use in Japan, was found in very high concentrations. One lab test on a leftover dumpling from a sickened family found concentrations at up to 400 times the limit for residues of the insecticide allowed on imported vegetables in Japan, said Co-Op Net, a cooperative that sold the product.

Health Ministry official Rie Hatanaka said the high concentrations were not residue from farm use, though she would not speculate on their source.

Heightening the scare, investigators said they found a tiny hole in a dumpling bag recovered from a sickened family, suggesting the food may have been deliberately contaminated, said Kenichi Mizuno, a police official in Hyogo prefecture where three people were hospitalized.

The contamination, which topped Japanese news reports, prompted many stores and restaurant chains to stop using imported Chinese food altogether.

"I'm afraid the dumplings could cause a negative impact on our diplomatic ties," said Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura. "We should promptly take measures to determine the cause and prevent a recurrence before relations are damaged."

Telephone calls to Tianyang and its parent company, Hebei Foodstuffs Import & Export Group, were not answered. Chinese officials have said they stopped the company's production and exports but said tests on pork, cabbage and ginger used in the dumpling batches blamed for the illnesses had shown no sign of the insecticide.

The dumpling scare increased already deep suspicions among consumers in Japan and elsewhere about the safety of Chinese foods. China's exports have come under intense scrutiny in the past year after potentially deadly chemicals were found in goods including toothpaste, toys and seafood.

According to foreign trade statistics released by the Finance Ministry, Japan-China trade value--imports and exports combined--reached more than 27 trillion yen in 2007, exceeding the value of Japan-U.S. trade--about 25 trillion yen--for the first time on a calendar year basis. Food products account for just 6 percent of China's total amount of exports to Japan, and many experts say the incident will have a limited impact on overall Japan-China trade.

While the Japan External Trade Organization maintains that no country can take China's place as a production and supply base, it is risky to develop an overdependence on the country. It is likely that some firms will start to import products from other Asian countries.

However, in the United States, where tainted Chinese-made products, including pet food and toys, became a major problem, many companies sought to promote their products by telling consumers that they did not include materials produced in China.

(The Associated Press, Daily Yomiuri)

"made in China" to meet U.S. safety standard

• a model for other countries

WASHINGTON — U.S.-Chinese agreements designed to make imports safer will serve as a model for other countries, the nation's top health official said Wednesday.

Under the agreements, Chinese producers of certain products will undergo a review that certifies their products meet U.S. safety standards. Those that pass will get quick access to U.S. markets.

"If you refuse to do that, then we want to scrutinize you with a higher degree of certainty," Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt told the National Press Club. "And it will take longer for you to get your products in, and your speed to market will be diminished, and your competitive advantage will be diminished."

Leavitt said the United States had made clear to Chinese officials that the recalls of toothpaste, pet food and toys had jeopardized the integrity of products labeled "Made in China."

He said he is convinced that Chinese officials got the message. "If they want access to our consumers they've got to produce according to our standards," he said.

Leavitt made clear that all nations are struggling to keep up with the global economy. The sheer number of imports have led to much of the problem. Products come to the U.S. from 800,000 different sources and from 300 different ports, he noted.

He said the U.S. can't keep up by simply hiring more inspectors.

"There's just too much of it, and to inspect everything would bring the global economy to a crawl," he said.

Instead, officials will rely on governments or independent businesses to ensure that products are safe where they are grown or manufactured.

Leavitt also said stronger penalties are needed. He said the administration is seeking the authority to increase fines for some unsafe products from a maximum of $1.8 million to as much as $10 million. The steeper fines would be for nonfood products regulated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, although Leavitt mistakenly told the audience they would be applied to food products.

Separately, the House on Wednesday unanimously approved legislation designed to make children's toys safer and increase the powers of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Under the bill, anything more than a minute amount of lead would be banned in toys meant for children under 12. Once fully implemented, the legislation would require the standard for lead in toys to drop from 600 parts per million to 100 parts per million.

The bill also would ban the sale and export of recalled products, requires tracking labels on children's products to aid in recalls and requires mandatory third-party testing by certified laboratories.

The bill also bans the commission from taking industry-sponsored travel, gives $20 million to modernize the commission's testing lab and increases the agency's budget to as much as $100 million for the agency by 2011.

The legislation "finally restores the CPSC to its rightful place of prominence and gives it the necessary tools to grapple with the global marketplace and protect America's consumers, particularly our children from dangerous and defective products," said Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill.

(The Associated Press)

.