Oct 06 2008
milk
This is my younger son, Dante - aged almost 17 months. I think the gene pool acquitted itself quite well here….:) He has just started talking and one of his favourite and complete phrases is “I want milk!” - this is usually preceded by pulling you to the kitchen and pointing vigorously at the fridge. I nursed him until he was about 10 months old and then weaned him gradually off to formula (I found that goat’s milk went down best) and then to full cream cow’s milk.
I have to admit that I’m one of those compulsive parents who read ingredient labels like a fiend and try as far as possible to feed my children balanced, natural and where affordable, organic diets. It’s not easy, but we try our best. So I can completely imagine the anguish of those parents in China and their anger at the unscrupulous (can I use the word evil?) companies who used an industrial grade toxin to boost protein levels in diluted milk. Frankly, it’s really incredible that this could happen in the first place. For one, the people responsible for doing this must have some basic grasp of science, so by default they would know the consequences of their actions. It boggles the mind.
But it also highlights a greater problem in our increasingly globalised and complex food supply chain. It’s already fairly challenging to screen out suspect products and produce from countries like China but what of raw materials in processed food? There is just no way to make sure that chocolate bar that’s made in Australia didn’t get its milk from China. In my household, I’d stopped buying vegetables and fruit from China for a few years now, but even then, I can’t escape the fact that everytime I eat out in my favourite coffeeshop or hawker centre, that stewed cabbage I love or the kailan stirfry that I dutifully order are probably, inevitably from China.
Of course, most Singaporeans say that they trust the AVA here and that proper checks are in place. I don’t doubt that the regulatory agency is doing its job, and I’ve personally met some of the people there and I know they are very serious about what they do. But the truth is, tests are not foolproof for the simple fact that there are some things that most agencies would never think of testing for. In this latest case of melamine tainted foodstuff - the regulatory agency in China admitted that the idea of finding melamine in milk was so unlikely that they just didn’t test for it as a contaminant. That’s like trying to test flour for cement - you wouldn’t think it was there in the first place…
Most of all though, I worry for my children - their little bodies harbour greater concentrations of toxins and their organs are less able to cope with filtering out the bad stuff. What do you do as a mother, when they lookat you with trusting innocence and happily slurp up whatever is put in front of them on the table? As I wrote before, I try to buy organic most of the time and I avoid most processed foods - but this whole scandal has really left me with a bad taste in the mouth. How much trust should we give food labeling? When is 100% fresh cow’s milk not 100%?
5 responses so far
Joanne Leow is a producer-presenter with Channel NewsAsia. She is married with 2 young sons and spends her free time reading, writing, swimming, doing yoga and cooking up a storm.
I have the same sentiments. All food we consume may contain traces of harmful particles unknown to us.
Last time I used to eat such big apples from a country which consumers can buy from the supermarket.
It soon dawned on me that such sizes of the apples may be genetically, chemically or biologically ‘manufactured’.. the subsequent giving up of my choice for such apples was immediate.
Its really natural for a mum to want to give the best to their children. Thats a good thing! But do try to balance organic food with “normal” food as well to boost up their immune system. There won’t be any organic food in the NS!
OMG! Joanne! Dante is all grown up! wow! he looks just like Luca man! kekekeke!
i think that we should be more careful with any rations comes from China not only milk,goods are make in China usualy are very cheap bring about its quality are very “cheap”. On other hand these managers’s responsibility have to be examined again,in short we should avoid the rations’s china at this time if you want to be safe for yourself and your family.
I think that Though food from china are cheap but the manufacturing process are frequetly unclean in most factory…. To me I think that the food scandal is a scary case that caused so many innocent childs to end their life for me I think that goat milk will be a better choice to subsitute cow milk now…… I hope this comment will help thx =]