Despite governmental pressure to "drop the issue," parents in China whose children died from complications of melamine-laced milk are taking a very western approach -- they are suing.

It seems like a lifetime ago that the Chinese contaminated milk scandal was in the news. But it was just September. In any other time the scandal would have dominated the news for weeks. It is a huge scandal.

But a financial meltdown,an expensive bailout,Sarah Palin's $150,000 wardrobe, presidential debates, and an election sucked up all the news oxygen.

Around 93,000 children become ill--many with kidney stones--- because dairy producers laced watered-down milk with a toxic chemical to fool inspectors about the protein content.

Officially, the death count from the contaminated milk  stands at  four infants.

However, many believe there were many more unreported deaths because it took the government and the dairy producers months to  alert anyone about the contamination. 

While many of us in the western world were focused on money and politics, griefing families in China decided to defy the government and sue over the deaths of their children.

Radio Free Asia is reporting that some of the parents plan to sue a subsidiary of a Chinese milk powder manufacturer based in Maryland.

A member of one of the affected families surnamed Liu said Qingdao Shengyuan Milk Co. Ltd., a dairy products manufacturer based in the eastern China city of Qingdao, had a Delaware-registered investment subsidiary with offices in Maryland, rendering it subject to U.S. law.

“We have signed a contract with a Maryland-based lawyer who will represent us in this collective compensation suit,” Liu said.

“There are milk victim parents who are willing to pay for the legal fees and expenses and who want to pursue justice in the United States,” he said.

Associated Press reporter Charles Hutzler has a gut-wrenching piece about the families who are coping with the deaths of their babies.Hutzler puts a human face on these deaths and he also reports that these parents want to sue.

It's hard to say how the government will handle this matter," said Zhang Xinkui, a Beijing-based lawyer amassing evidence of the contamination for a possible lawsuit. "There may be many children who perhaps died from drinking Sanlu powdered milk or perhaps from a different cause. But there's no system in place to find out."

In the weeks since Xiaokai's death, her father and his older brother have talked to lawyers and beseeched health officials, with no result.

"My heart is in pain," said her father, Li Xiaoquan, a short, taciturn farmer with hooded eyes. From a corner of his farmhouse courtyard in central China's wheat and corn flatlands, he pulls a worn green box that once held apples and is now stuffed with empty pink wrappers of the Sanlu Infant Formula Milk Powder that Xiaokai nursed on. "We think someone, the company, should compensate us."

The parents of 6 months old Yi Kaixuan are also suing.

The first sign of trouble was powder in the baby's urine. Then there was blood. By the time the parents took their son to the hospital, he had no urine at all.

Kidney stones were the problem, doctors told the parents. The baby died on May 1 in the hospital, just two weeks after the first symptoms appeared. His name was Yi Kaixuan. He was 6 months old.

The parents filed a lawsuit on Monday in the arid northwest province of Gansu, where the family lives, asking for compensation from Sanlu Group, the maker of the powdered baby formula that Kaixuan had been drinking. It seemed like a clear-cut liability case; since last month, Sanlu has been at the center of China's biggest contaminated food crisis in years. But as in two other courts dealing with related lawsuits, judges have so far declined to hear the case.

According to the International Herald,"Government officials have told parents and lawyers in the milk cases tat their complaints can be resovlved through out-of court- compensation payments."

Lawyers in Henan, a poor backward province, have faced more harassment from local officials than lawyers elsewhere. At least 20 of the lawyers who have dropped off the volunteer list are from Henan. On Sept. 27, officials from the province's judicial bureau, which administers the courts and legal licenses, met with lawyers to discourage them from taking the cases.

A working brief issued Oct. 7 by the national volunteer group said the officials had directly told the lawyers not to give any legal aid to the parents.

Chang said the pressure actually took a subtler form. Officials told the lawyers to report to the government if they decided to handle a milk case.

The officials also reiterated rules mandating that the lawyers tell the government if they take any cases centered on incidents involving many people or delicate issues.

Li Fangping, a human rights lawyer, said officials from the Beijing lawyers association met with lawyers in the capital last month to discourage them from filing milk lawsuits, especially suits with plaintiffs from multiple provinces. The lawyers were told not to publish working briefs on the Internet. At the time, the volunteer lawyers had already gotten more than 1,200 phone calls from concerned parents.

Meanwhile,just last week, the FDA decided to ban Chinese dairy imports. Note: most countries banned Chinese dairy products back in May.The Haphazard Gourmet Girls were not impressed the the FDA''s lack of urgency in getting rid of these products. In a post called " FDA Wakes Up, Smells Coffee, Decides There Might Be Melamine in The Cream, Months AFter The Rest of the World."

Gosh, every civilized country in the rest of the world took swift and decisive action on melamine contamination in September, just days after the magnitude of the melamine contamination in Chinese products was discovered. Hundreds of products were banned entirely or recalled in more than thirty countries. Most of these bans are still in place. The FDA's response? On September 26, they took the huge step of recalling melamine-contaminated White Rabbit Candy, and three coffee products from Mr. Brown's. This, despite the fact that the US is the single largest importer of Chinese products on Earth, and the FDA knew there were container ships headed for US shores, loaded with contaminated milk and milk-based products which would land here just about now (and for weeks to come). This, despite the fact that Unilever, Dove Chocolates, M&Ms, Lipton, Nescafe, and a host of other global companies that use Chinese milk and milk-based products were found to have melamine-contaminated products (a Haphazard recap of global bans, as of October 10, is here). China itself finally recalled all milk (but NOT milk-based products) on October 14; that's a month ago in Gregorian time. Only recently, China discovered that eggs are also contaminated with melamine; on November 3, international news agencies reported a mass poultry cull in China to end the contamination.

Elana writes about business culture at FunnyBusiness