Time was you could buy a bottle of ketchup and immediately start pouring the condiment to your heart's delight.

You did not have to unscrew the top, pull back the non-tampering plastic seal,throw out the seal,and then screw the top back on before you began using the ketchup

But you would have to be over thirty to remember those days. Any product that could possibly be tampered with after it has left the manufacturer now comes with a plastic protector that says to consumers --no one has touched this product since it left the manufacturer.

The plastic seals became part of American packaged goods as a result of the murders of seven people in 1982. The victims --all from the Chicago area --had taken Extra-Strength Tylenol medicine capsules which were laced with
potassium cyanide. The murderer was never found.

However,the reaction of Johnson &Johnson, the manufacturer of Tylenol has become an American classic of what you should do in a crisis.

They put the safety of people ahead of immediate shareholder benefit. Their stock tanked for a year but rebounded because consumers had confidence and trust in the company.

Which brings us to the latest product safety scandal coming out of China. This time it's tainted milk and milk byproducts -- tainted with melamine -the same poison that was found in pet food last year.

This time the melamine popped up in baby formula. Further testing found the poison is in a whole host of products ranging from candy to cookies.

Some estimates say the victims could reach 10 million.

China is pointing the finger of Sanlu Group Co ---43% of the company is owned by New Zealand's Fonterra Cooperative. The government of China owns the remaining 57%.

Fonterra is definitely not taking the same approach as Johnson& Johnson took in 1982.

In a phone conference to discuss the companies financial statements with the media , the chairman of Fonterra said the contamination scandal would not deter the company's commitment to " bringing healthy safe dairy products to China." He also said the contamination had taught the company a painful lesson --to be more suspicious.

"Fonterra missed testing for melamine ... so did everybody else," says Ferrier, who then corrected himself to say Sanlu missed testing.

He says Fonterra has worked aggressively with Sanlu and has confidence in its quality control, but it is difficult to predict "criminal contamination".

"We invested in a local company under the expectation that we could continue to bring in quality rules and procedures to make sure product was healthy for Chinese consumers".

"But ... jeez, someone coming in and poisoning milk? You can't get it all".

In future, Ferrier expects companies around the world to be checking for a wide range of contaminants.
tvnz.co.nz

Hmmm. Might I suggest the good folks in New Zealand study up on the Tylenol case. Not only did the CEO's sympathy for the deaths and illness sound less than heartfelt he also took a "don't blame us" attitude. Not exactly confident building.

David Wolf is a corporate communications and marketing strategist who has lived in Beijing since 1995 and says Fonterra's brand is in big trouble because the company allegedly knew about the contamination weeks before the kidney stone outbreak.

Fonterra, the large New Zealand food cooperative that partnered with Sanlu to manufacture the formula, will be remembered for a long time as a company that allegedly knew about the contamination some weeks prior to the kidney stone outbreak, that, justly or otherwise, reputedly did nothing to either stop the sale of the product or alert authorities. I cannot speak for the veracity of these claims, but they are circulating as if they are the truth.
[...]

The lesson of Fonterra is plain: foreign partners in joint ventures have three choices:

1. Pick a China partner of unquestionable operational integrity, and then watch over them like a hawk to ensure they continue to operate in an ethical manner, especially in crises;

2. Pick a China partner of imperfect operational integrity, then cram into every employee the importance of maintaining the public trust over any other consideration;

or my favorite

3. Avoid the joint-venture question entirely to ensure you can set and enforce ethical standards with ease.

HealthHabits has a list of the many news articles concerning the melamine outbreak. Included in that listing is a post by Martin Regg Cohn of the Toronto Star.

As a baby, my daughter regularly drank Chinese infant-formula. So when I learned of the latest tainted food scare sweeping China, it hit home – even from a seemingly safe distance in Canada.

In fact, years after bringing our adopted daughter back to a more predictable life here, I still don't feel safe.[...]How can we have confidence in the Chinese system when it still tolerates corruption and cover-ups at every level? It turns out Chinese authorities suppressed news of the infant-formula scandal during their quest for Olympic glory, deeming it more important to save face than save babies.

 

In Singapore, Auntie P who blogs at What's For Dinner has a list of all the products that are being recalled in Singapore because of the milk contamination. Some of these will be very familiar to American consumers:

• M&M Chocolates
• Oreo Wafer Sticks
• Snickers snack-sized bars
• Dove Hazelnut Milk Chocolate

The companies on the list have responded saying:

Mars Inc., the U.S. maker of M&Ms and Snickers, said in an e-mail that its candy can be safely consumed because its China unit doesn't use ``any milk powder or other ingredients for any of its products from any company which has been found to be selling melamine-contaminated dairy products.''

Hershey Co., the largest U.S. chocolate maker, said it never purchased milk ingredients from China, according to a voicemail by spokesman Kirk Saville.

Nestle SA, the world's largest food producer, yesterday said all its milk products sold in China are ``absolutely safe.''

Business &Human Rights Resource Centre

Meanwhile four babies have died,100 more are in critical condition,13,000 more are still hospitalized. It is estimated that 54,000 infants have become sick from the tainted milk.

Elana blogs about business culture at Funnybusiness

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