Pinoy Pharmacy

A third baby has died and the number sickened after being fed milk powder laced with an industrial chemical has soared five-fold to more than 6,000 in one of the worst food quality scandals to rock China.

The Health Minister Chen Zhu said: “As far as possible, minimise the harm to infants’ health from the contaminated milk powder.”

Hospitals were crowded with anxious parents seeking the free treatment promised by the government for their babies.Supermarket workers in many cities raced to pull tins of formula off shelves in a huge recall and amid fears the numbers of infants ill after drinking powdered milk adulterated with the compound melamine could rise. Minister Chen said more and more parents were expected to take their children to hospitals in the coming days.

The Government has announced that a fifth of 109 dairy manufacturers that have been checked had produced batches of milk products adulterated with melamine, used in plastics and fertilisers banned from foods. But the compound is rich in nitrogen, used to measure protein, and can be used to disguise milk that fails to meet standards or has been diluted.

source: timesonline.co.uk

Lets take a look on what is melamine on wikipedia

This article is about the chemical substance called melamine. The term "melamine" is also used to describe melamine resin, a plastic material.

Not to be confused with melanin, a pigment found in skin and hair.

Melamine is an organic base with the chemical formula C3H6N6, with the IUPAC name 1,3,5-triazine-2,4,6-triamine. It is only slightly soluble in water.

Melamine is a trimer of cyanamide. Like cyanamide, it is 66% nitrogen (by mass) and provides fire retardant properties to resin formulas by releasing nitrogen when burned or charred. Dicyandiamide (or cyanoguanidine), the dimer of cyanamide, is also used as a fire retardant.

Melamine is a metabolite of cyromazine, a pesticide. It is formed in the body of mammals who have ingested cyromazine.[2] It was also reported that cyromazine is converted to melamine in plants.[3][4]

USES

Melamine is used combined with formaldehyde to produce melamine resin, a very durable thermosetting plastic, and melamine foam, a polymeric cleaning product. The end products include countertops, dry erase boards, fabrics, glues, housewares and flame retardants. Melamine is one of the major components in Pigment Yellow 150, a colorant in inks and plastics.

Melamine is also used to make fertilizers.

Melamine derivatives of arsenical drugs are potentially important in the treatment of African trypanosomiasis[7]

Melamine use as non-protein nitrogen (NPN) for cattle was described in a 1958 patent.[8] In 1978, however, a study concluded that melamine "may not be an acceptable nonprotein N source for ruminants" because its hydrolysis in cattle is slower and less complete than other nitrogen sources such as cottonseed meal and urea.[9]

source: wikipedia

Comments:

Based on this incidence, can we conclude that Products(especially on milk products) from China are low of quality?