Naples Mafia selling poison bread, Chinese adding melamine powder to infant formula
1,253 babies in China have gotten sick from drinking powered milk that had been intentionally spiked with melamine (a chemical used to make plastic tableware), while authorities in Naples are warning people not to buy bread made by the Mafia, as it is baked with carcinogenic wood.
From the Times Online:
Two infants have already died from drinking the formula laced with melamine in a ploy by farmers to boost the protein content of the milk they sold to one of the country’s biggest and best-known milk powder manufacturers. Police have arrested 19 people, including two brothers who ran a milk collection station.
From The Guardian:
Open 24 hours a day, the street sellers are drawing shoppers with cheap, crusty bread fresh from wood-burning ovens, the way Neapolitans like it. But police say Naples' new breed of bakers are slowly poisoning their customers by burning old varnished wood, nut shells covered in pesticides and even planks pulled from exhumed coffins. "Whoever buys this bread is eating dioxins and carcinogenic substances and putting their health at serious risk," said Francesco Borrelli, assessor for agriculture for the province of Naples.
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The second case sounds more like incompetence than malice...
Actually, in the Chinese case, they were arrested only because the poisoned milk had the unfortunate side-effect of also working on male babies.
infact or infant ?
There should never be any doubt about infact formula.
for the news about Naples.
the story is about illegal bakers (that of course don't follow any hygiene law), not regular shop.
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.napolinord.info%2Findex.php%3Foption%3Dcom_content%26task%3Dview%26id%3D1274%26Itemid%3D2&hl=it&ie=UTF-8&sl=it&tl=en
Squirrel sounds pretty good right about now...
These actions are reprehensible, infact.
Speaking of Naples, don't go there. Don't buy anything from there and if you know anyone there tell them to move.
When I went to Naples we got robbed, threatened by the mobs, attacked by the football team, followed and intimidated and had the police tell us all that stuff was "normal".
We were only there for 2 hours.
Naples is full of bad mojo! AVOID AVOID!
"which was linked earlier this year to suspected tainting of local mozzarella."
This almost sounds like some SNL sketch.
Or Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle"; everything old is new again.
Read "Gomorrah" by Roberto Saviano for a good look into how much of Italy's land and public health has been fucked up by organized crime. It's certainly not simple negligence. It's the result of a criminal conspiracy to make money by cutting costs with no care as to the public health effects.
A Chinese firm accused of selling milk powder that has made babies unwell was warned in August over the safety of its product, its partner and co-owner says. New Zealand-based dairy giant Fonterra said it had urged China's Sanlu Group to recall the tainted powder six weeks before Sanlu took adequate action.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7615315.stm
But... but... I'm sure they told me greed is GOOD!
I thought market forces were supposed to prevent things like this. That's what the economists have been telling me.
*sigh*. And this isn't the first time, either.
Maybe now that it's babies, and Chinese babies at that, some serious regulation will happen.
"Chinese adding melamine powder to infant formula"
Oh come on! That is not a fair headline. Some evil people added melanine in order to boost their profits, the Sanlu company didn't do anything to catch or stop it. People in China are outraged over this but your headline makes it sound like China is poisoning its infants. Look at the comments, you even drew some trolls out of their lairs (#2 Shane) to join in. I like Boing Boing but the anti-China tone really has to end. It is a bit much.
If I point out the typo in the first sentence, does it make me a heartless person?
...anyway, you mean "powdered milk", not "powered milk".
Powered milk sounds like Vitamin Water to me.
Oh, and tainted infant formula/bread baked over toxic wood = horrific disregard for human life. On the part of the criminals in question. These people exist in every society - not just China and Italy - which is why all countries need a working public health/food inspection system.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_pet_food_recalls for a previous incidence of a similar nature.
Greedy, unscrupulous people gaming the system to make some extra profits, my goodness what a surprise. Sigh.
f y'r byng bby frml tht s md n chn y dsrv t b psnd nd yr kd shld slp y. Whr d y gt chns bby fd pwdr nywys? Th 95 cnt str?
Well, ST, if the shoe fits...
"Oh come on! That is not a fair headline. Some evil people added melanine in order to boost their profits, the Sanlu company didn't do anything to catch or stop it."
According to the article:
"State-run media reported on September 10 that babies had fallen ill after drinking the formula. The next day Sanlu issued a recall of products made before August 6. China had issued a list of 21 topics banned from the media during the Olympics — eighth on the list was coverage of food-safety scandals. "
They waiting a full month before announcing the problem in order to protect the Olympics. It is a fair headline.
It isn't a fair headline. You wouldn't write "Americans crash trains into each other" about the LA train accident. The actions were done by one company, citing their nationality in the headline makes it seem as if this is somehow the actions of a whole nation. And whether or not the Chinese government suppressed media coverage of it is not relevant to the issue since they don't represent the Chinese people.
#8 if we are suppose to believe all that happened in 2 hours, let's hear the full story.
I guess one of the reasons that the inventor of Tiramisu now bakes in Baltimore instead of his hometown of Napoli.
#13 I have never heard any self-respecting economist say that, just confused Republicans and Libertarians.
If the US transport authorities had a non-stop history of flouting every safety regulation and corruption at every level, that would be an appropriate headline. Chinese citizens die in earthquakes, from poisoned food, from innumerable causes because the government is utterly corrupt.
A pretty good definition of evil, if things really are as described.
#21 - If Blackwater were to have some sort of altercation in, say, Namibia, I'd expect the headlines to read "Americans start firefight in Namibia"
#23 - With the government it would take to run a country that size, I expect nothing less than it to be utterly corrupt. Government doesn't get cheaper by the pound, unfortunately :(
"Mafia" is strictly Sicilian. In Naples, it's called Camorra
First the Camorra takes over garbage collection, now they are using garbage to make bread.
They are nothing if not thrifty.
Burning wood from exhumed coffins? I wouldn't thinkg that would be a very ecconomical way to get wood, seems like digging up coffins would take too much work...
Interesting to note that the melamine they're talking about was also the root cause of the tainted pet food and subsequent recall earlier this year. Said tainted ingredients were also from China.
http://www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/hottopics/petfood.html
@28 Oh no. The tombs are above ground in the south (continuity from roman times). Quite easy to go fetch.
@8 you wouldn't happen to be from the north would you? Northern Italians have an avatistic fear of the mezzogiorno and especially Naples. I've been through there for days and the worst that happened to me were the constant beggars.
The breakdown. In Naples it's the Comorra, in Apulia and Basilicata it's the Sacra Corona, in Calabria it's N'dranghetta and in Sicily it's the Mafia or Cosa Nostra.
The N'Dranghetta is the current one on top.
*Puglia*
Would cooking with burning coffin wood really do any harm to the bread? Any nasty microbes would be killed by the heat.
Incidentally, my breadboard is made of wood from an unused coffin (elm, I think).
Bean, I don't think it's the microbes, but the varnishes and wood-stain that is the issue.
If it's the varnishes, why even mention that it's from a coffin? It's a cheap appeal to ick-factor.
Dioxins and carcinogenic substances will be produced in any wood-burning oven, not just a coffin-burning mob oven.
@ Bart- No, they can just correct it. Prevention is really beyond the bounds of any force-- free market or governmental. (Bribe the inspector, for example)
Why add poison to milk to boost it's protein content? Why not simply claim higher protein content and do nothing? It'll be cheaper. But if you're going to go to the trouble to fool the tests, wouldn't it make more sense to use something that isn't actually poisonous? Adding poison pretty much guarantees that you'd be caught when your customers start to die in a few weeks/months time. The situation in China with all these adulterated foods sounds a lot like the UK 150 years ago, or the US 100 years ago, before the formation of the FDA.
What those thrifty bakers in Naples need is a better wood burning stove that burns at a higher temperature, and channels the smoke away. Have a look at the Aprovecho institutional barrel stove. It's also cheaper to run as it uses less wood. Unfortunately it is for things you cook in a pot. Perhaps an innovative mobster can modify it to work on bread ovens.
More than 6,200 babies have fallen ill after drinking milk made from contaminated powder, Chinese Health Minister Chen Zhu has announced. The figure is five times higher than previously announced.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7620253.stm