Nuclear Beef

China 'fake milk' scandal deepens

State television says infants who were fed fake formula have been treated for malnutrition in a second province.
...
Around 200 babies in Anhui alone were fed formula milk of little nutritional value, media reports said.

An initial inquiry has shown that 45 types of substandard powder were on sale in Fuyang City, Anhui, produced by 141 factories across China, Xinhua said.
...
They said some of the babies developed what doctors called "big head disease", where infants' heads appear abnormally large in comparison to their bodies.

It was not clear if the counterfeit powder included any toxic ingredients, but some children were reported to have died within three days of being fed the fake milk.

This story is actually pretty sad. I remember when, years ago, I heard a story about the way that consumers of the third world "stretch" baby formula because they basically don't know any better. It made an impact on me at the time, and actually kinda made me hate Nestle for marketing formula in places with no clean water. This story is about 30x worse than that.

Speaking of Nestle..

Nestle Urged to 'Tell Truth' About GMOs

Chinese lawyers and experts yesterday urged Nestle to reveal whether the Swiss firm's Nestle Nesquik contains genetically modified organisms (GMO), as widely suspected.

Zhu Yanling, the plaintiff, bought Nestle Nesquik at a Carrefour outlet in March last year.

"Soon, I learned from a report by Greenpeace the product contained genetically modified elements,'' she said. "As a consumer, my right to know the truth was tampered with.''

The 33-year-old woman asked for a refund, plus compensation of 6.8 yuan (80 US cents), which is as much as the price of one bag of the drink.

Now ok, that's a pretty weird story. She sued Nestle for 80 cents, for GMO food? Greenpeace put her up to it?

But that's not the weirdest thing :

The case became more complicated when a second test on the product at the end of last month showed no genetically modified ingredient was found, contradicting the findings of an earlier examination in August.

"No matter what the result is, there is no denying consumers find it difficult to know the truth about such a product,'' Wu said.

On the two different results, Wu Zhangzhu from GeneScan, a leader in the field of molecular biological testing of genetically modified organisms in food, feeds and agricultural raw materials, said that a test may not be that exact.

There's a leader in the field of testing food for Genetic Modification.. and it's Chinese? What the hell? What in the world is this Genescan up to?

GeneScan's U.S. laboratory is located in suburban New Orleans, LA. It is a subsidiary of GeneScan Europe, AG, a publicly traded biotech company located in Freiburg, Germany, in the heart of Europe's biotech corridor. GeneScan USA started in 1998 under the name Central Hanse Analytical Laboratory, LLC, (CHAL).

Figures, they're Cajuns. Uh.. Germans.

A. on the hook for the Malk.