Food fraud: Deadly Melamine Milk Scandal

By 20. February 2013Blog, Health, Nutrition, Quality, Risk Management

Six infants died, 860 were hospitalised and approx 300,000 were affected by the melamine milk scandal in China in 2008.

But why was melamine added to the milk? Demand for milk far outstripped supply and so watering down the milk was a way to increase the product and hence profits. However, there was a test used to determine nitrogen (and therefore protein content) of the milk that could detect if it had been watered down. So melamine, with its high nitrogen content was added to the watered down milk to artificially inflate the protein content and fool the test.

Unfortunately it had the slight side effect of causing kidney stones and fatalities.

Read the full story on Wikipedia.