Retracing toxic powder path back to China

When Chinese authorities discovered in the summer of 2007 that the chemical was behind the poisoning of thousands of cats and dogs in the United States, it was explicitly banned from both food and feed. Melamine is now considered a controlled substance in China, and its production and use are supposed to be strictly supervised by the government.

The government has bragged about its efforts to overhaul its regulatory system, shutter tens of thousands of factories and step up inspections. But it is clear that loopholes remain.

Xue’s shop is in Xingtang county, just 30 miles north of the Shijiazhuang headquarters of the Sanlu Group, the dairy company whose milk powder is at the center of the widening scandal. Xue, who pocketed US$150 for every ton of powder he sold, was part of a semiprofessional business that operated like any other start-up, according to farmers and other potential customers who were solicited by melamine dealers.

There were legitimate-looking stores, representatives at milk collection centers and even door-to-door salesmen. Customers with questions about how to use the melamine knew that technical assistance was just a phone call away.

Until recently, the salesmen would come every few months to Guo Junfeng’s dairy farm in Shanxi province. “Even if you don’t have milk, mix this substance with water and you will have something that is just like milk!” Guo remembers one of them telling him.

The salesmen were hawking two grades of the powder. The first contained whey protein, which can be collected from cheese made from cow’s milk. That was the cheaper type and cost about US$44 a bag, but it didn’t always work perfectly. The second kind, which cost roughly US$118 a bag, was more mysterious. The bag had some English writing on it that Guo could not decipher.

The vendors said they couldn’t read the letters either, and they could not explain what exactly was in the mix. But they said you could use the powder to create milk from any liquid.

Many of Guo’s fellow farmers in the province were dazzled by the idea of increasing their profits as much as 300 percent, he said.

But Guo said he knew it was too good to be true. “I’m usually a very suspicious person,” he said. “They said it was nothing dangerous, but I couldn’t be sure.”

Dairy industry analysts who have inspected the melamine powder said it appeared to have been created by sophisticated chemical technicians. Qiao Fuming, a dairy consultant in Beijing, said it is impossible to take raw melamine and mix it with milk because it won’t dissolve. The melamine had to be converted into a form that could be mixed with liquids, he said.

Wu Jianping, a salesman at the Lixia chemical factory in Shandong province, said it was clear that some of his company’s customers were not in industries that traditionally use melamine. But, he added: “We never ask what they use melamine for. If we ask, they say, ‘You don’t need to ask. You want to sell it. We want to buy it. That’s all you need to know.’”

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