Dairy-Do
January 29th, 2010
I’ve grown fond of drinking milk imported from South Korea. It’s quite tasty, pasteurized and safe to drink. The French and New Zealand brands sold in Chinese supermarkets tend to be of the irradiated sort that can stand preserved on a shelf for a very long time. The China melamine scandal of the Fall of 2008 put me off drinking local milk, just when I had decided to go back to drinking the stuff. The last two weeks, though, and I’ve not been able to buy the South Korean brand because of an embargo China has placed on the stuff. I think the embargo has to do with the fierce competition the Chinese dairy industry still faces after its meltdown in the Fall of 2008, but I could be wrong – Koreans in China seem unclear on why their dairy isn’t getting across the border.
It seems the Chinese dairy industry is up to its old tricks again. Authorities in various provinces such as Guizhou, Sichuan and Jiangsu have swept market shelves clean of the brands, all of which hail from east-central to north China: Shanghai, Liaoning, Shandong, Hebei. According to a spokesman for the industry, melamine-tainted products were still available in the supply chain after the 2008 crackdown. A relaxation of oversight as well as graft contributed to the scandal after-shock.
The lack of transparency in regulation and enforcement compounded with government collusion with business interests puts a great many supply chains in China in jeopardy. The close social relationships between suppliers and producers amplifies knock-on effects in the same way a megaphone amplifies a whisper. If Western companies in China that rely on supply chains whose operations and inter-relationships are opaque, companies need to aggressively revisit suppliers and put in place systems and controls that keep operations above-board.
It does no good to get caught up in the backwash of someone else’s greed.
Further reading: NYT, China Daily
See also:
Thar Be Black Dragons in China
Follow up: China Begins Emergency Check of Dairy Products (NYT)
