Milk matters

Don’t know how much coverage there’s been in the UK of the news story about tainted baby milk powder. Here, it’s vied with the Paralympics for biggest news of the week – at least on the one English-language TV channel we currently have, which shows the news every couple of hours so you tend to get to know it off by heart!

Basically several of the big dairy companies have been found to be producing infant formula powder tainted with melamine (the stuff kitchen shelves used to be made from), which unscrupulous local producers have been adding, in order to make a quick buck by disguising the fact that they’re watering down the milk. Apparently it was the New Zealand-based parent company of one of the dairies who did a random quality-control test, spotted it and blew the whistle. At least four babies have died and hundreds more are ill as a result. It’s just too horrible to think about. If ever there was a time to feel grateful that I’ve so far failed to produce a baby, this is probably it.

But like all these scares, positives will (and indeed already have) come out of it. Peter – being the expert & all – says that it will professionalise the dairy industry here, which after all has only been in existence for about fifteen years. Apparently it’s been common practice for ‘peasant’ farmers [I don’t like to use that word but can’t think of a better one] who own one or two cows to walk them daily to a local milking station, where their milk is then sold on to the big dairies. This earns them a bit more money, and adds to the milk yield for the big dairies who are, it seems, struggling to meet the growing demand.

Certainly the milk section of the supermarket is always very busy and there seem to be hundreds of brands and different types of milk. In Heilongjiang province we're fortunate in that all of the local dairies have tested melamine-free. Incidentally, we’ve learnt that if it looks like a milk carton, it’s probably yoghurt. Milk tends to come in bags. Yes, little plastic bags from which it is impossible to pour unless you snip off the corner and put them into – you guessed it – an empty carton. As they say, you figure it out. We, however, have a milkman! Well, technically we don’t at the moment, but we did and we will again very soon. He (or she, never seen him/her, and never likely to) comes at 5am, seven days a week, and deposits two of said little bags, containing real fresh milk, not UHT – which is a miracle – in a little polystyrene-insulated box attached to the wall outside the door of our flat! What are the chances of that? Who knows, maybe the whole ‘milk delivery’ idea will catch on in the UK (!).


Oh, while I’m off tack slightly, one source of light relief in all this is the fact that Chinese newsreaders are having some difficulty with saying the word ‘dairy’ repeatedly (as I’m having some typing it repeatedly, actually). ‘Diary’ is quite common, but there was one report we watched which referred more than once to ‘diarrhoea’ companies. Possibly strangely apt in a sick kind of way!

Anyway, it’s at the local milking stations that the problem has been occurring. Several people have been arrested, and the head of the main dairy company involved has been sacked, along with (for some reason) the mayor of the region where the scandal first came to light. More importantly, a much more rigorous system of quality controls has already been put into place, and Peter reckons the use of milking stations will cease, peasant farmers will find another way to make money, and the dairy companies will have to use bigger herds of their own – which ultimately will mean more business for his firm. As several other companies have now been implicated, chances are there will be more sackings and arrests. What’s interesting is that if this happened in Europe or America, I bet these people would have resigned without waiting to be sacked, but here the done thing seems to be to wait to get caught before you admit to anything or take responsibility. ‘A shame culture, not a guilt culture’, Peter read somewhere.


Hence, I dare say, the reason why no one will take charge of our visa situation. I can hardly believe that as I type this, Peter is up in the sky on his way back to Edinburgh without me. Before anyone gets excited, it’ll be a flying [pardon the pun] visit; he’ll be in Yorkshire most of the week and hopefully back to China next weekend. We await the verdict on whether I’ll have to do the same in October. Meanwhile, I’m alone on the bridge, watching out for Klingons as I eat my lunch.