Junta identifies nine brands of contaminated milk

The The & Mungpi
Mizzima News
October 10, 2008

New Delhi - Burma's military government for the first time on Friday announced that it has detected the industrial chemical melamine in nine milk powder brands being sold in Burmese markets and has warned consumers to avoid the identified labels.

A notice in the junta's mouthpiece New Light of Myanmar newspaper on Friday said authorities tested 16 brands of milk power and found the presence of melamine in nine of them.

The contaminated brands are: Star Milk Powder (20 gm), Crown, Happy Baby Toys, Dulac (Dumex) step 1(INFANT FORMULA), Star (450 gm), Mandalay-Raw Milk Powder, Whole Sweet Milk Powder (Two Cows Shi Lin), RAIN BOW Milk Powder, and Enfagrow Milk Powder.

The junta, in the paper, said it has also confiscated 46,025 kilograms of milk powder contaminated with melamine from a company in Burma and destroyed the stockpile.

"[T]hat other eight brands of milk powder in Yangon [Rangoon] and Mandalay markets imported by eight companies are being tested; and that import of other milk powder is temporarily suspended while safety checks are being carried out," the paper said.

The paper further said the Ministry of Health, Myanmar Pharmaceutical Industries, Myanmar Pharmaceutical Factory (Yangon) and the Development Centre for Pharmaceutical Technology under the Ministry of Industry-1 had conducted a test on 16 brands of imported milk powder and found that nine brands were contaminated with melamine.

The junta's announcement of its findings came nearly a month after the Chinese Foreign Ministry acknowledged that Chinese manufactured contaminated milk had been exported to five developing countries, including Burma.

A nursery school owner in Rangoon's Mingalar Taung Nyunt Township, however, said the announcement came too late, as the contaminated milk powders had previously made their way into markets with little awareness on the part of consumers as to the danger of consuming the infected brands.

"We are worried because here people lack awareness, so both children and adults are likely to have consumed tainted milk," said the nursery school owner, who works with children between the ages of two and five.

"But the worst is that even if any children would have fallen sick, it is unlikely even for doctors to blame the tainted milk as there is no proper testing and scanning," he added.

But an official at the Burmese Ministry of Health in the last week of September told Mizzima that they have been monitoring major children hospitals across the country and had so far not found any cases of illness that could be connected to contaminated milk.

Meanwhile, the Myanmar Golden Star (MGS) Company, which produces Star milk powders and was named by the junta in the list of contaminated milk brands, said they are awestruck by the announcement that mentioned two of its products to be contaminated with the chemical melamine while its third, and related product, was not mentioned.

"It is so strange," an official at the MGS Company told Mizzima.

He added that the company's amazement at the announcement was only enhanced due to the fact that it procures its materials from New Zealand, and not from China.

The junta's newspaper on Friday claimed melamine was detected in Star's 20 gm and 450 gm packages, but not in 200 gm packages.

The official at MGS Company further said they have not retracted their products from the market as they have not received any notice to do so from the authorities. But, he said, the company will decide what steps need to be taken during a meeting to be held today.

Similarly, an in-charge at Rangoon's Sanpya market said the market committee has not received any notice to seize the contaminated milk and still sees several brands of infected milk powder, particularly Rainbow, being sold in the market.

"Usually, if the government announces something like this in the newspaper, we are ordered to seize the products so as to stop them from being sold in the market. But this time we have not received any notice and I still see contaminated milk being sold in the market," the in-charged told Mizzima.

The Burmese Ministry of Health, when contacted by Mizzima, refused comment and said the Food and Drug Authority (FDA) is solely dealing with the matter. But an official at the FDA in Rangoon said Dr. Kyaw Lin, Director General, who deals with the issue, is currently out of the station.