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The 2008 Chinese milk scandal was a food safety incident in China. The scandal involved milk and infant formula along with other food materials and components being adulterated with melamine. China reported an estimated 300,000 victims in total. Six infants died from kidney stones and other kidney damage with an estimated 54,000 babies being hospitalised. The chemical gives the appearance of higher protein content when added to milk, leading to protein deficiency in the formula. In a separate incident four years prior, watered-down milk had resulted in 13 infant deaths from malnutrition. The scandal broke on 16 July 2008, after sixteen infants in Gansu Province were diagnosed with kidney stones.〔"The tainted baby formula scandal was exposed on 16 July after 16 babies who were fed on milk made from powder produced by Hebei Province-based Sanlu Group in northwest China's Gansu Province were found to have developed kidney stones."''Xinhua, 23 September 2008''〕 The babies were fed infant formula produced by Shijiazhuang-based Sanlu Group. After the initial focus on Sanlu—market leader in the budget segment, government inspections revealed the problem existed to a lesser degree in products from 21 other companies, including an Arla Foods-Mengniu joint venture company known as Arla Mengniu, Yili, and Yashili. The issue raised concerns about food safety and political corruption in China, and damaged the reputation of China's food exports. At least 11 countries stopped all imports of Chinese dairy products. A number of criminal prosecutions were conducted by the Chinese government. Two people were executed, one given a suspended death penalty, three people receiving life imprisonment, two receiving 15-year jail terms, and seven local government officials, as well as the Director of the Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ), being fired or forced to resign. According to VOA News, the World Health Organization referred to the incident as one of the largest food safety events it has had to deal with in recent years, and that the crisis of confidence among Chinese consumers would be hard to overcome. A spokesman said the scale of the problem proved it was "clearly not an isolated accident, () a large-scale intentional activity to deceive consumers for simple, basic, short-term profits."〔 In late October 2008, similar adulteration with melamine was discovered in eggs and possibly other food. The source was traced to melamine being added to animal feed, despite a ban imposed in June 2007 following the scandal over pet food ingredients exported to the United States. In 2012, Jiang Weisuo, a 44-year-old general manager of a dairy products plant in Shaanxi province, was rumoured to have been murdered in Xi'an city. It was Weisuo who had first alerted authorities to the scandal. According to the Xian Evening News, Jiang died in hospital on November 12 from knife wounds inflicted by his wife, Yang Ping. ==Melamine== (詳細はmelamine-formaldehyde resin, a type of plastic known for its flame-retardant properties and commonly employed in countertops, dry-erase boards, etc. Melamine itself is nitrogen-rich and is sometimes illegally added to food products to increase their apparent protein content. It has also been employed as a non-protein nitrogen, appearing in soy meal, corn gluten meal and cottonseed meal used in cattle feed. Melamine is known to cause renal failure and kidney stones in humans and animals when it reacts with cyanuric acid inside the body. The use of melamine in food production is not approved by WHO or national authorities. The Kjeldahl and Dumas methods used to test for protein levels fail to distinguish between nitrogen in melamine and naturally occurring in amino acids, allowing the protein levels to be falsified. Introduced into milk, it can help conceal fraudulent dilution with water. Melamine adulteration of food products also made headlines when pet food was recalled in Europe and the U.S. in 2007. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「2008 Chinese milk scandal」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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