Rotten Mango - #336: Poisoned Baby Formula TURNED 300k Kids Into “BIG HEAD BABIES”
Episode Date: February 15, 2024“Could you please help me? I need money for my baby.” Something strange was happening in the small city of Fuyang, China. There was an influx of families begging for help on the street. All of the...m said something was very wrong with their child. The baby had a mystery illness and needed help. When passerbys would bend down to take a closer look - they realized that the 5 month old infant had the head size of a “full size watermelon.” This was not a genetic condition nor was there an explanation. The truth would lead to over 20 arrests and 2 death penalty sentences. And the eerie feeling that - there must be something in the water there. Full Source Notes: rottenmangopodcast.com To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Ramble
Ba-da-bing Ba-da-boom
Something very strange was happening in China
I mean not all of China, but a small city called FuYang City
News reports start coming out about quote, big head babies in FuYang
They called it a scandal, they called it the big head baby scandal of FuYang City
I mean there were stories that people would travel across China to go to FuYang and they'd be walking on the streets
And they would see these families on the street begging for help, begging for donations, please
help my child. And then the passerbys would be like, I don't know what's going on, can I take
a look at your child? They would pull back the blanket or the parents would pull the baby out
of the stroller and they would notice six month old infants whose heads were becoming larger than full-sized watermelons.
And they would be taken aback.
I mean not only because this child looked like they were in excruciating pain,
but because this wasn't even the first child with this condition that they had seen in town recently.
I mean, none of the children were born with a genetic disorder.
Their parents stated that they had quote normal sized heads
Before one date their heads just started swelling or they called it ballooning. They didn't even know why I mean
It's very clear though
Something very strange was happening to the babies in Fuyang
But what?
The answer will result in three hundred000 injured children, many dead, seven government officials publicly removed from their positions,
20 people sentenced to prison,
and two people sentenced to death by the courts. We would like to thank today's sponsors who have made it possible for Rotten Mango to support
Share Our Strengths No Kid Hungry campaign.
They are working to not only provide food security, but also provide resources for families
to tackle the root causes of hunger.
This episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rotten Mango's dedicated
team of researchers and translators.
And we would also like to thank you guys for your continued support as we work on our mission
to be worthy advocates of these causes.
Now as always, full show notes are available at RottenMangoPodcast.com, but just a quick
disclaimer, I think it's very important to note that we recognize what a privilege it
is to have the freedom of choice when it comes to food.
Our intention is to not speak over those facing food insecurities.
That is an epidemic on a global scale.
Our intention here is just to provide context for the experiences that these families affected
in today's case had.
And because xynophobia has become such a huge problem, I mean even more so now than before,
I would like to reiterate that this is not a Chinese problem.
This is a problem that's happened in the United States before as well.
I mean this is happening all across the world and I want to say that nobody else was more
negatively impacted by this than Chinese citizens.
So keep in mind, the Chinese citizens, the Chinese civilians, the consumers are different
entities than the Chinese government.
They are not synonymous with one another.
So with that being said, let's get into it.
It's hard to say what Mr. Wang was thinking that day.
He's standing inside of his house.
He's too anxious to sit down.
He's too anxious to lie down. He's too anxious to lie down.
He just wants things to be over and done with.
He's standing in front of his apartment window,
staring outside and he was being blamed for the dead babies.
I mean, why, why was he being blamed for the dead babies?
All the parents are blaming him.
The whole nation sees him as some sort of sick,
twisted sadistic baby killer.
He's the vice president for one of the biggest companies in China for crying out loud.
He should not be treated this way.
This was not supposed to be how his life goes.
He was supposed to have the money, the prestige.
He's not supposed to have a death sentence trial looming over his head for the death of babies.
Mr. Wang contemplated what his life had become, and
then he very slowly opened the window and flung himself out.
He was one of the executives present at the secret meeting on August 1, 2008, the secret
meeting that took seven hours. 100 days of hell started when the CEO of this massive conglomerate got the results
back that their product tested positive for deadly amounts of a chemical.
We sent out a batch. The results came back. 15 out of the 16 samples have incredibly high
levels enough to kill. The CEO of the company took that report into the conference room and shut the door and
none of the executives were allowed out until 4am the next morning.
During the first hour of the secret meeting, a pact of silence was implemented.
If you talk, we all go down.
If you talk, I'm going to take you down with me.
Once the pact was made, the rest of the night focused on the cover-up plan.
It was being hatched.
Each executive picked up their phones
and called the most influential person that they knew
in their contacts, government officials, PR reps, mayors,
CEOs of massive media companies, pull some strings,
milk every connection that you have,
you whip out every dirty little trick,
if that's what it takes.
You know a secret about an official, you use it now.
Blackmail, extortion, we're not above it.
This is an all hail Mary.
Do you guys get the message?
Either this works or we're all gonna be cellmates.
Once the right calls and threats were made,
everybody was on board.
The cover-up was initiated.
They just had one last thing on the meeting agenda.
Edit the test results.
Blackout that word and replace it
with substance A. Nobody can really know what's in their products. They are after all a sponsor of
the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. They are after all the preferred choice for Olympians.
all the preferred choice for Olympians.
Just a few months prior to the secret board meeting, May 12th, 2008, a magnitude eight earthquake
struck Sichuan province in Northwestern China.
The earthquake was probably the 14th deadliest earthquake
known to humankind, killing more than 87,000 people.
And usually, in like the absolute darkest moments of history
Sometimes not all the time sometimes the world does come together for help
So regardless of diplomatic relations, everybody starts reaching out
They start sending people to Sichuan Finland sent enough tents to house 200,000 displaced civilians along with 30,000 blankets
Japan's rescue teams were one of the
first foreign groups to enter Sichuan. The Philippines sent medical teams. South Korea
dispatched a 41-person international rescue team over 1.3 million volunteers from China and from
around the world. They gathered at Sichuan to help. A total of 10 billion dollars was donated to help. A total of $10 billion was donated to help with the civilians. Which,
say, please let me know if you want me to cover this case because the devastation was linked
to a ton of actual crimes. It wasn't just an earthquake and the $10 billion relief fund,
a good chunk of it, was stolen. But I digress. In that moment, people are trying to help.
America sent relief and supplies. American companies came together to create a fund of over $30 million to send over to
the civilians.
Chinese companies rallied.
They donated millions of dollars.
One dairy giant in China even donated $2 million worth of milk powders and baby formula.
I mean, this is all hands on deck.
Everybody wants to help.
But there was a very alarming pattern emerging
after the earthquake dust settles.
Children in Sichuan were becoming gravely ill.
Melamine looks like cocaine,
and just like cocaine, if you snort a lot of it,
it's gonna kill you.
You can buy a pound of the white odorless powder
on Amazon for $50, but I'm not sure
why you would really need it. Melamine is a raw industrial compound. It's a really important
substance that we're pretty much surrounded by this everywhere in our day to day lives.
It's in everything. Plastic food containers, cooking utensils, paper, chopsticks. Melamine
is everywhere. It's even used for laminate floors and whiteboard coatings and it is totally safe.
If you have a melamine plate,
it's perfectly safe to eat off of that plate
or a plastic food container with melamine.
They're all safe unless you heat it up.
Heat brings out the melamine compounds
and then it just leeches into your food.
That's why a lot of melamine plates and bowls
or plastic products with melamine,
it says do not microwave, not microwave safe.
It's not just because it's gonna melt in the microwave,
it's because you will be unknowingly eating melamine
with your pasta for dinner.
It's odorless, it's tasteless,
you wouldn't even really know, you wouldn't even taste it.
Now, how much melamine would come out of microwaving
your plate once?
I'm not sure, but high levels of ingested melamine would come out of microwaving your plate once? I'm not sure.
But high levels of ingested melamine are super dangerous.
Symptoms include blood in the urine, inability to urinate completely for days at a time.
It's not like you lose the feeling that you have to go pee.
You feel like your bladder is about to burst, but you cannot urinate.
It will not come out no matter how much you push.
It's stuck in there.
Kidney infections.
And it could, through all these complications,
ultimately lead to death.
You could die by melamine poisoning.
And after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake,
children in that region and all over China,
they start experiencing those types of symptoms.
There were speculations that melamine was heated
during the earthquake that maybe from all the debris in the buildings and all the buildings that crumbled because melamine is also used in concrete
It's maybe being leached into the water supply. Maybe it's tainting the water supply. Maybe it's tainting the air
Maybe it's up in the air. It's hot may Sichuan. It's heady
Everything's getting steamed. It's in the air and then all the children are breathing in the melamine dust, and maybe they're a bit more sensitive than adults.
I mean, what else could explain the sudden strange symptoms in the children after the
earthquake?
A few months later, a man by the name of Mr. Wang posted on an internet forum.
Now this is not to be confused by the vice president of the secret meeting Mr. Wang.
This is a regular civilian, Mr. Wang, this is a regular civilian Mr. Wang. We're just gonna call him Wang. Now the post starts, experiencing this event
was like experiencing a long night. It's like having a bad dream. It's very difficult
to reveal the truth unless there's a major incident. Like the Fuyang Big Head Baby incident.
Everyone's like, what is this man talking about? He continues, my 13 year old daughter has been complaining about stomach issues, which
would not be the most alarming thing in the world, right?
But one day she comes to him and says, Dad, I have crystals in my pee.
He's like, what on earth are you talking about?
You have crystals in your pee?
What kind of crystals?
The next time she used the restroom, she didn't flush and she went to go get her dad and she's
like there's crystals in my pee again.
Come, come, look.
When goes to investigate and sure enough, there's tiny little crystals at the bottom
of the toilet.
Little stones, they're just sitting there.
But also, her pee is a very strange color.
It's like a dark murky yellow color.
It's not just a dark yellow which would indicate that she's dehydrated, but it's murky. Why does it look like it would only be a dark, murky yellow color. It's not just a dark yellow, which would indicate that she's dehydrated,
but it's murky.
Why does it look like it would almost be thick?
Wayne has no idea what's really going on,
but he knows that is not normal.
So he starts investigating.
He even posts on this forum to ask for help,
and some commentators, before reading the whole thing,
they jumped onto the melamine.
They're like, it's gotta be melamine poisoning. That's what it sounds like. It sounds like it, doesn't it?
But Mr. Wing continued. He's like, I know it's a little strange, but I do have a strange habit.
My whole family does. I'll buy a ton of milk powder or sometimes even baby formula for my 13-year-old
daughter and even my elderly parents. Because in his mind he's thinking if you're going to get all your nutrients delivered
in a quick easy fashion that you can keep up with every single day like a 13 year old,
like an elderly person, like they don't have patience, they don't have time, I mean sometimes
even the hunger to eat all that food that gives you all the nutrients, that's too much.
So he just assumed milk powder or baby formula would be the healthiest, it's jam packed
with nutrients for growing babies.
But he noticed, there was a direct correlation between every single time his daughter would
drink the baby formula and then she would have these debilitating stomach cramps and
little pebbles in her urine.
She would be screaming on the toilet because it started to hurt to urinate.
And he said he was just confused because the only thing that makes sense after all this
investigation that he's been doing is the baby formula.
He even reached out to the company and asked, hey, do you guys have a recall for this baby
formula right now?
They said no, but you should send us all your product.
It was a very fascinating response.
Now originally when this gets posted, there were no responses, like nobody cared at all,
and the people that did, they actually hated on him.
They said, don't be posting these allegations about such a wonderful brand unless you know
exactly what you're talking about.
It could be a wide plethora of different things that could be causing your daughter's
pee to have pebbles in it. It's not the baby formula brand. There were people defending
this company and this was probably one of the biggest companies in China of all time.
Do you know the saying in the business world? It's called, you conquer the three deer. So
in China, they call it the three deer. You conquer central China or a large
region of China, be the biggest brand there. I mean, that's already tens of millions of people
because China is a huge, huge nation. Then you conquer the whole country of China. That's over
a billion people. You be the nation's industry leader. And then the third deer, the very last one
that you have to hunt down and conquer, global domination.
You conquer the world.
Because if you can conquer China, you can conquer the world.
Dear one, conquer the region.
Sichuan Province population 83 million people.
How do you win the hearts of 83 million people in China?
You could, I guess, if you sell baby formula, for example, or milk powder, you could lower
your prices for a while, but that's not winning anybody's love or loyalty.
It's winning their wallets for the moment.
The minute that you raise your price to make higher profits, they're going to all leave
you.
Or someone new is going to come in and have even lower prices and they're going to leave
you.
You could try and create the most amazing advertising campaign and sign someone
that's massive from Sichuan, a huge celebrity, try to be in their favors, but that's not guaranteed
and it's going to be very pricey. I mean, you're talking tens of millions of dollars if you're
looking at someone that has that much influence over 83 million people. Chairman Tian, one of the
biggest executives in the dairy world, decided to wait for the
perfect opportunity to strike.
Instead of trying to force a whole region of China to love her, she would wait until
they needed her.
In 2008, the Sichuan region of China was hit with one of the deadliest earthquakes in human
history, like we were just talking about.
Out of the 90,000 dead, at least 5,300 of them were students in school
Another 375,000 civilians were injured. I mean it was the 14th deadliest earthquake in recorded global history
Chairwoman Tian knew that right now is the time to win hearts right now is the time to win customer loyalty
So she very publicly donates $2 million worth of baby formula
to the Sichuan Relief Fund during the earthquake. How do you not fall in love with a company
like that? They stepped up when Sichuan needed them. They're not even from that region. So
with that, they conquered Sichuan. They conquered the first year. So they move on to Dear Number Two. Space milk, you conquered the nation.
Population, 1.4 billion people.
Astronauts in China are the pride and joy of the nation.
Chairwoman Tian knows this,
so she lands a partnership with the NASA of China
so that when astronauts go to space,
it would be her powdered milk that they take with them.
Her brand would be synonymous with space milk.
If it's good enough for the astronauts
who are the pride and joy of the nation,
it's good enough for the average consumer.
You're not the one going to space.
You don't need all these nutrients.
But if it's enough for the astronauts to be out there
with no fresh vegetables, no fresh milk,
and they're drinking this and they're staying healthy
in space, through space,
Chairwoman Tian won the nation, which leaves just one
deer left. Dear number three, the 2008 Beijing Olympics global domination population 7.8
billion.
You win the Olympics, you win the world. I mean, not just in terms of gold medals, but
if you land a sponsorship role at the Olympics, your brand is going to be seen by the entire
world. But you could also take it a step further. You could role at the Olympics, your brand is gonna be seen by the entire world.
But you could also take it a step further.
You could also sponsor the event,
but also supply all of the Olympians with your product.
Not just from your home country,
not just the Chinese Olympians,
but every other Olympian from every other country
visiting to compete.
You are as close to world domination as it gets.
Chairwoman Tian secured a deal to be the supplier of milk for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. She would
host marketing campaigns. The Beijing Olympics were going to be held on August 8th, 2008. 888.
I didn't even know that was the number 888. That's the luckiest Chinese number.
The luckiest day, she would argue. And if you gave birth on that date, she would give you free baby formula.
Just one box.
Really?
Yeah, but people wanted to do it. An earthquake, space, the Olympics. That is how Chairman Tian would become the queen of the dairy industry in China and take over the world.
Wenhua Tian was not always the queen of the cows.
That's what she was after the Olympics, but not really, okay?
So before she was one of the most powerful female executives in the business world in all of China,
she was just a vet on a small dairy farm. After graduating vet school,
she gets a job at the Baijiao Happiness Dairy Cooperative,
which at the time was basically like a mom and pop farm.
I mean, you had maybe like two, three founders
of the cooperative, and then you had 32 cows and 170 goats.
You got more cows than you have employees.
Tian was in charge of taking care of all the cows and the goats.
And as she's caring for the cows, she's listening in on the founders talking about their problems
in the business, and she realizes that this whole dairy industry in China is clearly not
doing well, and she's got the solution.
The current method that she's witnessing is, milk farmer from a small rural region saves
up money, buys a cow, then goes to source a healthy cow, purchases the cow,
milks the cow, sells the milk to a big dairy company to do whatever they please with that
milk, bottle it up, turn it into yogurt, milk candies, who cares, right?
Technically it makes the most sense.
One business is the supplier, the other business is buying.
But the demand from big companies to purchase milk is high and the rule of farmers investment
capital is low, meaning even if the rule of farmers investment capital is low.
Meaning even if the rule of farmers have the space and the time to have 10 times more cows
on their farm to supply 10 times more milk and 10x their revenue, they don't have the
money to purchase 10 times more cows.
But the dairy companies do.
I mean all they got is money.
So Tian decided she was going to raise capital.
She was going to purchase cows for farmers
and tell them to pay her in milk.
The cows aren't free.
The farmers will have to milk them and send them over
and milk will be the payment.
So let's say per cow you ask for, I don't know,
this is a completely arbitrary made up number
because I don't know the market value of cows.
But one cow, let's say is 10 gallons of raw milk.
Once the farmer gives the company 10 gallons of raw milk, that debt is paid and that cow is theirs.
Meaning any more milk after that will be paid by the dairy company.
That's really smart.
Yeah, it's technically a win-win on both sides.
Because prior to this, dairy companies would spend millions, if not tens, hundreds of millions,
a year maintaining their own pastures and milking facilities and hiring their own employees
to go to these dairy farms like they were in charge of admin, HR, everything.
But now they're like, why don't we just buy a bunch of cows for the rural farmers and
then just take their milk?
They get a ton of milk in return and farmers don't have to save up every single penny
and go into debt trying to scale their farm
and purchase more cows.
Now the small farmers, they also don't have the fear
of going into competition against the big corporations.
They feel like they're part of the big game.
It's very low risk on both sides,
or at least, that was the initial thought.
So Tian ends up taking over the happiness dairy cooperative and rebrands
it and appoints herself as CEO. She is the one who will single-handedly push this company
to become the nation's largest baby formula producer. She implements her cow-loaning system
instead of like a house mortgage, you get a cow mortgage that you pay off in milk.
She takes this company from being just a regular dairy farm
to being on the Wall Street of China,
Beijing Financial Street.
Why sit there and milk cows
when you can pay everybody else to do it and make billions?
By 2006, she's created a massive corporation
with hundreds of employees, if not thousands.
They had shareholders.
They partnered with New Zealand's
Fonterra Dairy Cooperative,
which is the world's fourth largest dairy company.
And they became known as the king of the cows in China.
Yeah, like this is a name that everyone knows.
The ads on TV is like ingrained in your memory.
Did you drink?
I'm pretty sure I have.
Like, it's that big.
It's like you go into Kroger and it's like on the shelf.
You can't avoid them.
They're that big.
They became, yeah, one of the most famous household brands in the nation
to the point where their trademarked name became synonymous with baby formula.
So some brands have so much power to their brand name
that they can almost replace the actual word
for the product that they sell.
For example, Band-Aid.
The word for the actual product they sell is a bandage.
Band-Aid is a company name, it's trademarked.
Or Kleenex is a trademark's name.
The word for the product is tissue.
Or Chapstick, the word for the product is lip balm.
So Tian took this company from being 32 cows
and over 100 goats to monopolizing
the powdered milk industry.
And by 2007, the company was doing $1.4 billion in revenue.
And she renamed it to help with the rebrand.
It went from being the happiness cooperative to San Liu, which translates to three dears.
Three dears. Conquering the three dears was part of her big plan.
That's so dark. When you hear three dears, you don't think of conquering three dears.
Like hunting. Yeah, hunting. Right. You think of like three running dears. Yeah, you think of like at the spring and they like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, that a few cows and a few humans, I mean, they're gonna get hurt along the way when you're conquering three deers.
When you're going for global domination,
sometimes a cow is gonna get hurt.
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And the dairy industry in China at the time was a bit shady and I think even in the US,
even now it's a bit shady.
At this point in China, it was an unregulated time.
The biggest problems that the dairy industry was facing were chemicals and additives being added to the milk to increase profits and fake milk being sold on the markets.
Fake milk, not like oat milk, almond milk, milk replacements, fake milk. There was a huge scandal
with the baby formula company in China called Xi'en, not to be confused with the clothing
company Xi'en, and they touted themselves as the superior baby formula brand that was entirely
made overseas in the United States.
They stated because all their products were imported and manufactured in the
US, then exported into China.
They're going to be a bit pricier than the other domestic brands.
It's like when you get French clothing imported into the US.
But the quality, I mean that's something that you're gonna feel. If not now, then you're gonna feel it later when your kid gets into the top schools in China. So after some investigation,
it was exposed that Xi'an was never a US-based company. They didn't have a facility in the US
or even an office. They never sold dairy products in the US. The company had zero affiliations to the United States of America. They were never registered
with the FDA, which you absolutely must be in order to sell baby formula. The company
address was some abandoned garage in the United States. It was never imported milk. Everything
that she had sold was manufactured in China, but marketed and lied as fake milk from the US.
It was a complete and utter lie to charge Chinese consumers even more.
The ones who could afford Xi'an bought Xi'an. The ones who couldn't afford Xi'an,
they ate less, spent less so that they could buy Xi'an. Or they bought the next best thing,
Or they bought the next best thing, San Lu,
which was half the price. Do you know how a baby formula is made?
They're made in these giant steel vats.
They look like vans, like you know those aluminum vans?
Okay, that's not what you call them, like camper vans.
Uh-huh, wait.
Do you know what I'm talking about?
Those huge vans, you go glamping in them.
It looks like that.
They're these giant, I don't wanna call them bowls.
They have tiny little holes at the top,
like a submarine and you stick mixers in.
But the whole thing is just churning and mixing
and it's this encased, giant steel tube, steel vat.
They look like vans, that's how large they are.
And raw materials like milk, water, filtered water,
added nutrients
They all get mixed into this vat in liquid form to create a liquid blend
And then it's typically heat treated to kill all harmful bacteria
Then it's cooled down held in secure temperature cooled tanks. I mean these tanks are huge
You could swim in them which you should never do but you could
Now testing is typically done at this stage to make sure that the batch meets
the specified nutrition levels.
And once it passes the liquid is heat treated once more, and then it's
transferred into this giant drying machine where it's turned into powder.
So it's like, okay, that's interesting.
I didn't know it was like kind of a dehydration process.
And then you just add water and
Rehydrate it usually after it's dried There's another testing process where the batch undergoes
Microbiological analysis and it's just it's not an easy process to make baby formula
San Lu use this method to feed millions of babies every day all over China
They handle the production of the baby formula, but they need to purchase all the raw ingredients
through their suppliers.
So they gave all these farmers all the cows,
and now they're like, hey, we need our milk,
so bring us the milk.
Think of them as like the chefs in the kitchen,
but they still need to buy the supplies.
Great, that's how it usually works everywhere.
So where does it go wrong?
The suppliers start ripping off sun loo. That's where it usually works everywhere, so where does it go wrong? The suppliers start ripping off Sanlu. That's where it goes wrong.
Some farmers realized, look at how much Sanlu is making in the market.
They wanted a larger cut of that. For Sanlu, they're getting better profit margins.
The farmers should get better profit margins too.
Since without the raw milk, baby formula would be impossible for Sanlu to even create, so
farmers start mixing in water with their milk to make it seem like there was more milk by
the volume so that they could get paid more.
Sanlu catches on.
They start measuring the milk by its protein content rather than its liquid volume to pay
the farmers because water has no protein.
A big part of baby formula is the protein level.
Protein is critical for infant survival growth
and development and milk is packed with protein.
Now the farmer thought if we water down the milk too much
then the protein levels decrease
then there because there's no protein in water
then San Lu will just pay us for the real milk
that we bring in.
So that's pointless unless, unless we find another loophole.
The way Sanlu would test for protein in the milk would be to test for nitrogen levels in the milk.
Nitrogen is a fundamental component of the building blocks of protein. So testing for that is cheaper
and simpler than like, I think it's most people just test for nitrogen everywhere across the
board for most food companies. So in conclusion, if the milk is a high nitrogen content,
Sanlu believes the milk has a high protein content
and pays the farmers more for the milk.
So all they have to do is then take the water down milk
and the farmers are like,
we gotta inject something with nitrogen in it.
Cause that's what they're testing for.
To bring up the protein levels
since the water brought it down, so to speak. So what's something that's what they're testing for. To bring up the protein levels, since the water brought it down, so to speak.
So what's something that's cheaper than milk
that's got high nitrogen content?
Some chemicals.
Melamine, industrial chemical melamine.
Not only is it super cheap, it's cheaper than milk
and it's got incredibly high levels of nitrogen.
Melamine is 66% nitrogen.
So adding it to the milk products helps it give a false result of high protein.
It's also odorless, dissolves into liquid very easily, and it's a white color.
It looks like baby formula.
It looks like cocaine.
Like whoever came up with that is, is dead.
Is dead.
Well, sentenced to death.
One of them.
What a crazy, crazy, crazy, like, let me just throw something in baby powders.
Like, how could somebody come up with that?
To see it being injected into milk,
I feel like most humans would have an aversion to it.
To see chemicals go into food.
Like, industrial chemicals.
That would be like pouring Windex into a Gatorade.
I feel like most humans would have a, whoa,
like a very diverse.
Yeah, wow.
So farmers, they started lacing their milk with melamine
and then shipping it over to San Lu.
Instead of bringing in, let's say,
five buckets of fresh clean milk
and getting paid for five buckets,
they could now bring in 10 buckets of water down milk
that's still five buckets of milk,
but add five buckets of water, inject some nitrogen into it,
and get paid for 10 buckets.
When all they really had is five buckets of milk.
Now the question is, did the executives at San Lu know this?
I mean, I guess you could argue that for a while, perhaps not, maybe,
you could argue that if you wanted, I guess because Sun Lü themselves would argue that the Chinese government
did not at the time require food to be tested for melamine, you could argue that they didn't
know that Sun Lü's baby formula products passed the regulations and the quality test.
One of the top executives bragged to the public nonstop.
This is about a year before everything implodes,
that they are the only company that has over 1,100 steps
to check the quality of the baby formula.
Their tagline was, 1100 rounds of quality test,
care for the baby's health worthy of mother's trust.
The vice president would always say in interviews,
the quality of our baby formula is what keeps babies alive.
And it keeps San Lu alive.
It is our bloodline.
Wow.
CCTV, which is China Central Television,
the state-run news network had a segment where they
investigated this 1,100 steps claim.
They sent reporters out to San Lu's farms to see what was
going on at the first link
of the food chain.
So obviously, if you go to HQ, you've got a bunch of corporate people in suits that are
like, of course we have 1100 steps.
Look at our very real processing plant that's just here for aesthetics.
So they're like, we got to start at the first link of the food chain.
We got to go to the farms and we got to check out these cows.
See if they really do have good quality control.
Each person stepping into that milk facility, the cow farms,
they had to stand in UV light for five minutes to get disinfected.
Their cars were disinfected in the parking lot with UV lights.
They went to go see the cows themselves and the cows looked happy.
Each cow had a yellow tag on their ear and the Sanlo employee stated, Oh yeah,
I know everything about each cow's background. I know who their family members are, you know, because we're trying to keep
cow incest at a minimum here. Each employee of Sanlu on the farm had a health tag to ensure
that nobody came to work sick. I mean, this seems like the type of company that you wouldn't
want to buy baby formula from, right? So where does it all go wrong? How long does it take to take down a billion dollar company?
100 days.
Day one, Dr. Zhang is sitting in his office at the hospital.
He's staring at his patient list
and none of this is making sense.
I mean, the past 10 days alone,
he's treated countless kids with the same strange problem.
Every new patient room he enters.
First of all, he doesn't even work in the pediatrics department, so why are there
so many children in the emergency room? It's looking like the PICU, it doesn't make sense.
Every time he entered a new patient room, it'd be the same thing. A mother holding a swollen
baby about 6-11 months old, the baby's belly is rock hard, and it looked as if the infant
had swallowed a full-sized
watermelon.
The infant looked pregnant.
Their heads were swelling.
It's described as a slight ballooning of the foreheads.
It looked just something wasn't right.
The moms would cry out, please you have to help me.
He hasn't peed in 10 days and I don't know what to do.
In days?
What do you mean he hasn't peed in days yeah he hasn't
peed in days when was the last time they peed maybe a day or two ago maybe like
five days ago honestly but there was red blood in the urine and that's why we
rushed over Dr. Zang tries not to show his panic but this is very alarming this
is very deadly if these babies are unable to, their bladder could rupture inside of their bodies
and that doesn't sound too dangerous to some people,
but it's deadly.
That's why they tell you to pee before you start driving
because if you get into a traumatic car accident
with a full bladder and in that accident,
your bladder ruptures, the urine leaks into your insides,
that's all toxic waste.
You're gonna die very quickly of an infection.
But typically when you are a baby, one of the biggest things is you just pee.
You don't have the ability to hold your urine.
So the fact that these children are unable to pee to the point that it's risking their
lives to them almost dying.
I mean, it was terrifying.
So Dr. Zhang is on high alert.
One swollen baby, that's a strange case.
Two swollen babies, he's getting concerned.
By the fourth swollen baby that day,
Dr. Zang is starting to feel very unsettled.
He's sitting there in his office, lunch untouched,
in his 23 years of being a doctor,
he had never seen so many children
at risk of dying from kidney stones.
That's what was causing this. Kidney stones.
Have you ever seen one of those cold pressed juicers?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, so not a blender that you just stick fruit
and vegetables into and then you mix them up together
and like a blade crushes them up.
It's more of a mechanism that you put the vegetables through.
It's like a hydraulic press
and it's gonna separate all the liquid out
and the rest of the stuff.
So you get the skin, the peel, the pulp all separated to one container and then the pure juice on the other side.
That's how the kidneys work.
So your blood runs through the kidneys, they take out any particles, any toxins, and then they send it into the bladder to be peed out.
And then now the clean blood circulates back into your body. Ah that makes sense I see. Your kidneys are a cold press juicer.
Like a little filter.
Yes.
Maybe the easier comparison would be that your body is a city and the kidneys are like the
water filtration facility.
It filters all the bad stuff out of the blood and then it sends it to the bladder which is
Storaging the wastewater until it's peed out
But sometimes the water treatment plant starts having difficulties filtering everything out because maybe there's too much calcium or minerals that are Sticking together and then hardening and they're not enough water. So you get these little clumps
Stones as they call them they get stuck in your urinary tract and once you have one
It's like a snowball.
More minerals are going to come rolling down and then start sticking to it and it's just going to
get bigger and bigger and bigger. And kidney stones are very, very painful, right? Yes. Okay. So the
word stone almost has this implication that it's like a smooth stone. They're more jagged crystals.
So they can actually cut up the inside
of your urinary tract as you're trying to pee it out.
That's the best case scenario is peeing it out.
The worst case, well, the best best case scenario
is that you don't get them.
The second best case scenario is that you get small ones
and then you pee it out.
But it's still very, very painful.
But once the stones are too large to be able to pass on
without causing bleeding
or kidney damage or won't for whatever reason pass through your urine, you have to get them removed.
It's not really something that you can stall. Because if you don't remove the kidney stones
quickly, you're going to notice that you can't pee at all. It's blocking your urine stream. So
you're going to want to pee. it's not that you suddenly lose the want
the yearning to pee you're gonna want to pee it's just gonna be painful it's gonna sting nothing's
gonna come out you feel like you're gonna explode because the kidney stones are blocking the flow
of urine it's not only described as being such a unique type of pain that it's almost borderline
sadistic they say it's also very dangerous to have kidney stones because if your kidney stones
are blocking your flow of urine, your bladder could explode.
So you have to get these kidney stones removed.
Typically there's three ways to do it.
One, medications or shockwave therapy.
This is wild.
Doctors can use shockwaves or like strong vibrations and sound waves to break down your kidney stones
inside of your body.
This is non-invasive typically,
and they will break into smaller pieces
and then pass through into your urine.
Or the second way is that the doctor will send cameras
into your urethra.
So like through your p-hole, into the bladder
and to the kidney stones, and once they locate it,
they will usually have lasers attached to these small tubes and they'll laser the kidney stone to break it up.
And then hopefully you'll pee it out.
You have to be under general anesthesia for this type of process because I mean obviously
it's going up your urethra and it's going to take a few hours.
Or the third method, this is probably the most invasive.
They have to cut a small hole into
your back because that's where your kidneys are. They're closer to your back and they will send a
thin flexible tube to break into your kidney and break up and remove the stone. It is the most
invasive but it is the most effective when it comes to removing a very large stubborn kidney
stone. And with this type of
procedure, you typically cannot even go home the same day. You're going to have to be under
general anesthesia for quite a bit of time. Now, I know one of the first things that I do when I
hear about these types of medical situations, I'm like, Oh, okay, I have it for sure. Right.
But no, they say you will know if you have kidney stones. Like it's not something you're like,
Do I have kidney stones or not? You will know people who have kidney stones. Like it's not something you're like, do I have kidney stones or not?
You will know.
People who have had kidney stones, they stated,
it hurts more than giving birth.
One woman on Reddit said,
I'd rather give birth to 100 more kids
than have another singular kidney stone ever again in my life.
One person stated it's a unique type of pain.
They stated they never even
noticed. You don't even know where your kidneys are. You don't feel your kidneys.
You never think about your kidneys. But then when you get a kidney stone, you
will never forget where your kidneys are. They said it felt like someone was
stabbing you in the kidney with a red hot knife and then twisting it around
back and forth, back and forth. Someone even touching your back makes you want to throw up and gag. Another person stated
I couldn't move because of the pain. I thought it was gas but then when I went
to the toilet I literally lunged forward on the toilet. I was in so much pain I
could not move I could not stand up I could not stop shaking from the pain I
was as white as a sheet I started throwing up and sweating like I was running a marathon.
They're trying to pass a kidney stone through their urine.
Oh my goodness.
The pain was so severe, I couldn't even make a noise.
I just had silent tears running down my cheeks.
Another person just simply put it,
I had two kidney stones.
I've also been ejected from a moving vehicle
going 75 miles per hour. I've
been shot at before and I've experienced severe drug withdrawals. I would take any of the others
again over any other kidney stone ever. I'm not kidding. Your entire groin hurts like hell and
when it finally passes out in the urine, it will tear the lining of the urethra. The pain is a 9 out of 10 on the pain scale and you cannot escape it.
It is absolutely relentless.
Now it is painful but not the most fatal condition known to mankind, especially if you're an
adult.
For children though, kidney stones are incredibly dangerous, if not fatal.
Without even touching on the enormous pain aspect that the kids are going to feel, surgically
removing a kidney stone from a child is very difficult to do.
Their body parts are incredibly tiny to navigate through and it's not ideal to have younger
children under general anesthesia for longer than three hours at a time.
It can actually hurt brain development.
But if you don't remove these kidney stones, the kidney stones are blocking the urine and you could, at the very least,
develop a lot of different conditions. You could have the kidneys become enlarged and
swollen from the buildup of urine, which could ultimately lead to the loss of kidney function
or death. And there's still that high risk of that bladder rupturing inside of the body.
And even if these kids somehow survive all of that, there is a chance that their kidneys
could still be so damaged that they will not be functional.
And they have to have kidney dialysis.
If your kidneys don't work, do you know what you have to do?
Add a filter or something.
You have to go to the hospital three times a week, four hours at a time, and be hooked
up to a machine where they circulate your blood.
They take your blood out of your body,
it runs it through the machine,
and this machine acts like your kidney
and cleans your blood, and then you have another needle
sending that blood straight back into your body.
Wow, so it's very, very, very crucial.
Yes, you have to do this three times a week,
typically four-hour sessions,, you have to do this three times a week typically four hour sessions
And you have to do this until you can gain function of your kidneys again or get a kidney transplant
And if you can't do either of those things you have to do this three times a week for the rest of your life or you will die
So it's obviously a big deal and it's not a common thing to happen
So Dr. Zang needs to know what the hell is going on right now.
Why are all these kids getting kidney stones to the point that it could kill them?
Usually children do not get kidney stones.
Adults get them for poor diet and all these other unhealthy lifestyle choices that we're
making but when you're a child it's very difficult, especially the types of kids that Dr. Zeng
was seeing.
6 months old, 11 months old.
They're not even toddlers that could eat
like very salty foods and develop kidney stones.
What could they possibly be eating?
It's not genetic, it's not environmental
or at least not in a vague sense.
So it's not just happening in one town.
I mean, a lot of these families
traveled to get to this hospital.
It's gotta be something else.
So he's running through their routines over and over,
trying to find something similar.
He sat the parents one by one down
and he's in front of one of them right now
and he's like, okay, again, start from the top.
List everything you do, everywhere you go,
what are you wearing, who do you see, everything.
What laundry detergent do you use?
Dr. Zhang is starting to feel hopeless.
I mean, this is another patient
who has nothing in common with the other ones. And the mom is starting to feel hopeless. I mean, this is another patient who has nothing
in common with the other ones. And the mom is saying, well, every morning I go to work,
so it's not easy for me, but I make sure. And Dr. Zhang is staring at the mom. What?
She's leaning over the hospital bed feeding her tiny little baby hooked up to all of these
machines, a little baby bottle. Sorry, she needs to eat.
I mean, she's looking for it and it's time.
What baby formula do you use?
He thought of all the patient records.
They all had something in common.
Now that he thinks about it, they all drank.
And the mom is like, oh yeah, I save up
so that I can buy the best formula on the market.
San Lu.
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If you commit libel and slander against a billion-dollar company that has access to
some of the most top attorneys in the nation, you could be looking at years of a lengthy
court battle that's purposefully dragged out so that you lose everything you have to fund
this losing fight.
Because sometimes lawsuits are about who drives out first, who runs out of cash first, and if you're someone with a river flowing through your house with an
endless stream of water and you're going up against someone who's got a tiny
glass filled with a few sips, who's gonna win the battle? But losing everything
to your name is not even the worst case scenario. In China, defamation can land
you in prison for up to three years. And with Dr. Zhang's case, interestingly enough, he wasn't just risking being sued
for libel by San Lu, meaning San Lu could sue him for spreading false news or lies about
him just because he thinks all of his patients' parents feed them San Lu.
That's not enough.
Dr. Zhang could be sued for spreading false information that leads to a national food
emergency.
If he spreads a rumor that San Lu is contaminated and is causing kids to have kidney stones,
and it turns out to be false but parents don't believe it because they're in full-on panic
mode, there's a baby formula crisis, he could be held responsible for that.
Additionally in China, government positions are the most coveted positions in the workforce.
They're called iron bowl jobs, meaning that your bowl that you eat out of is never going to break.
You're always going to have a meal. It's an iron bowl.
So working for a big company like Google or like Alibaba, for example, it's a prestigious job,
but your bowl is not iron.
It might be the most fancy, high quality crystal bowl that like sparkles in the light when you eat near the window
And people are looking at you very jealous like wow a crystal bowl, right?
But you could still get fired. There could still be layoffs the company could go under
There could be a number of reasons why you no longer work for them, but an iron bowl is an iron bowl
Yes job security. Yeah. Ultimate.
Unless you break the law or something, right?
Otherwise, your iron bowl is gonna be filled with food.
Now in China, government positions are so coveted
that when you're applying for a position,
you not only have to have the highest qualifications possible,
but you also have to have the perfect background.
Not only can you not have a criminal history,
but neither can your parents or even
your partner. If Dr. Zhang were to be arrested for libel and for causing a national food crisis,
his children would never even have a shot at the best positions in the country. They could not
apply for government positions, no matter how hard they work. Dr. Zhang is thinking about going up
against a giant cow and he's just a tiny little ant that's going to get stepped on. So Dr. Zhang is thinking about going up against a giant cow and he's just a tiny little ant that's going to get stepped on.
So Dr. Zhang's wife is pleading with him like what do you mean you're gonna tell people it's Sun Lu and they need to be careful about Sun Lu?
I don't think so. You're not doing that. You can't do that. You're gonna get in trouble. Do you not understand?
You're gonna you're not gonna be a doctor anymore.
Dr. Zhang was quiet for a moment. He thought about all the patients that he had that day.
I mean, some kids had walked days just to get to this hospital.
Walked days with their parents.
They couldn't afford bus tickets.
Their parents were desperate.
They were migrant workers.
They have nothing to their name.
Every day they don't work, they're falling deeper into debt.
They have no safety net to fall back on.
They're willing to risk it all, walk days to a bigger hospital to try and see a urologist, a specialist.
And even if a specialist is willing to work on their child, they have no idea how they're
going to afford it all.
These are the types of people he's seeing.
His patients, the parents, they're like skin thin.
Why?
Because they're spending all their money on baby formula
And those are just the patients dr. Zang is seeing
What about the rest of the kids in the nation? He doesn't know what's going on anywhere else
Dr. Zang just looks at his wife and said if I lose my job, I'll just be a street vendor
Maybe I can stand in front of the hospital
and spread some love to the people in need.
Maybe I can sell flowers for super cheap.
Dr. Zhang reported it to the higher ups in the hospital
and eventually to the center of disease control
as well as the national ministry of health.
Now, an article was released soon after
about a contaminated baby formula that was on the shelves
that was causing kids to turn to stone. They would call them stone babies because of the kidney stones that
they were forming. A lot of experts felt like this was going to be worse than the 2004 Bighead
Baby scandal. So just to give you extra context from the beginning of this episode, the 2004
quote Bighead Baby scandal took place in the city of Luyang. Parents were feeding their children milk formula
that had one to 6% of the essential vitamins, minerals,
and proteins for growing baby's needs.
The formula was later dubbed quote,
empty shell baby formula.
Oh, it only have one to 6% of intended nutrients.
Yeah, which doesn't sound that bad, right?
It's honestly- That sounds bad. It's horrendous
Let me tell you why right because typically the first few months of a baby's life about six months the entire nutrition
Consumption is through either breast milk or baby formula. They don't even drink water
Yeah, they don't even drink water until they're like, I don't know nine months old because they don't want babies to get full
Off of water which does not have the nutrients that they need to grow,
and they will consume less breast milk or formula,
which means they're gonna risk not having enough nutrients.
Large amounts of water can also affect the concentration
of certain nutrients in the baby's blood,
which can also be very dangerous if not fatal.
And technically there is water in the baby formula
and the milk, so it's not like they And technically there is water in the baby formula and the milk,
so it's not like they're not getting any water. But the idea that baby formula that
was sold in that city would only contain one to six percent of the baby's nutritional needs
is beyond alarming. The lack of nutrition caused irreversible damage. The babies that
were on that specific formula were just consuming cheap fillers like starch and sucrose with a dash of milk flavoring and like
1% of their daily needs
They were not growing the way that they were supposed to and it resulted in a condition that enlarged the head
The heads of babies became swollen and it started the quote big head baby scandal
The government investigated milk formulas
that were being sold and found that 45 brands
were making milk formula that did not meet standards
of quality.
20 of them were straight up producing baby formula
without a valid license.
And three of them were dangerous knockoffs
of existing brands.
They were counterfeit baby formula being sold in stores.
Posing as real companies that do quality control
when they do not. 229 babies were impacted and 12 babies died in the Fuyang city in 2004 from this
situation.
And here's another one.
Just four years later, and this article is basically stating, we think this one's gonna
be worse.
Now, everyone wants to know what freaking formula is it?
Like how do we
avoid it if we don't know? It felt like someone was gatekeeping this information. So this article
comes out they don't name the brand. Parents start freaking out there were a lot of reports of parents
just taking their babies off of baby formula and trying to feed them like egg tarts. Every single
baby formula company was being accused
of being one of the ones that caused kidney stones.
People were scanning through all these websites,
company websites, looking at share prices,
over analyzing everything and anything
that had to do with baby formula
to see if they could figure out which company is it.
And one of the bigger pieces of the puzzle,
initially at least, Wings Threadpost
about his daughter's urine being a strange color, right?
So he even described the taste of the milk powder.
He's like, no, I had San Lu.
Like that's the one that I gave my daughter, remember?
And then he was getting ripped apart in the comments.
They were like, why are you bringing a wonderful
dairy company into this?
This is like the nation's treasure.
This is the nation's brand.
And you're just, you're irresponsible.
You probably don't know what you're doing.
So that's when that post being dug up again.
Yes. And people are like, oh, maybe it's done.
Maybe it's done Lou because this new article
from mainstream media is getting a lot of press
and attention and moms are going crazy.
And everyone's like,
which baby formula company is giving kids kidney stones?
So they dig up this post again and it's described.
He described the milk powder as being weird.
It kind of smelled aromatic like milk,
but it wasn't, it was weird.
It tasted very smooth,
but you could feel the powder residues in your mouth.
So you would see it and there's no clumps of powder.
It's not like you needed to mix it better,
but it's almost like you could feel it swirling,
the tiny little particles.
Oh my God.
That's what he's saying about San Lu.
And he thought, well, that can't be San Lu.
San Lu is the nation's brand of baby formula.
They have 1,100 steps for QA.
It's gotta be a different issue.
He read a few articles about counterfeit milk.
So he thought this is a situation of counterfeit milk. He reaches out to San Lu, asks, do you have a counterfeit
issue? They go back and forth and then it's agreed that Wang would send them opened bags
of San Lu that he bought that he felt were bad. The company receives his package and
then they ghost him. So he keeps reaching out to get an update on this case
and the company's sound Lou just tells him,
yeah, those samples are authentic products, not fakes.
So Wang is like, okay, that's even more alarming.
If they were fakes, I'd be like, okay, that makes sense.
But if they're authentic, then what's wrong with the product?
So he emailed them back.
Well, then are there quality issues with the product?
Can I see some sort of lab report?
Because you must have run a lab
in order to identify that this is an authentic product.
No, no, nothing's wrong.
A regional distributor will be in contact
with you for more information.
Wong's like, okay, that's really weird.
Why do I need to talk to a regional distributor?
Well, they talk to him and they're like,
hey, so here's what we're gonna do, okay?
So you bought how many bags?
Doesn't matter.
Every unopened bag that you bring us,
I'm gonna give you a new bag.
Okay, it's gonna be an exchange.
Now, every opened bag that you give us,
I'm gonna give you two new bags.
What?
Yeah.
Wayne is like, what?
Why would I do, like this whole thing is weird.
So he reaches back out to the company,
the guy that he was originally talking to,
and he's like, why can't I just know the results
of this test?
I don't wanna talk to this regional guy.
I don't know what he's talking about.
Just tell me, I just wanna know what the sample showed
because my child ate that milk powder,
had abnormalities in her urine,
and I just feel like I can't live in peace.
What about the other kids who are drinking
the same milk powder?
Do they have weird urine?
So Wong stated that the company rep just told him,
the lab results reveal trade secrets
so we can't tell you, just willy nilly, you know?
And the milk powder packaging says it's intended
for kids ages three to seven.
You stated that your daughter is 13.
So I'm just saying.
What? Yeah. What?
Yeah.
What are you saying? Like 13 year old can't drink it?
Basically.
So, Wang was confused.
He left off the internet post by saying that he's going to spend,
he might even mortgage his house to test this Sun Lu powder by himself.
But mysteriously, just 10 days after he posted that,
he would ask the website moderators
to take it back down.
He stated that the milk powder was a counterfeit,
which nobody believed because in his original posts,
he talked about how Sanlu told him it's an authentic piece.
It was later discovered that Wong was given
four boxes of baby formula, about $350
in exchange for his post being taken down and him signing
on the dotted line that he would no longer talk about this incident, in exchange for
four boxes of baby formula.
He would also have to forfeit all the products in question to Sanlu, all of his unopened
Sanlu products.
Wings signed on the dotted line, took the $350 worth of baby formula, asked to take down his post and handed over 13 bags of milk formula.
But he had 15 bags.
Two were hidden in his closet for safekeeping.
Woah.
September 11th, 2008, an article was published finally naming San Lu as the culprit.
Within hours, San Lu formally releases a product recall statement saying that the company's
own inspection found batches of San Lu baby formula to be contaminated with melamine.
Day 100, the cow empire comes crumbling down.
The top executives from San Lu and some of the bigger dairy suppliers for San Lu were
arrested.
Chairwoman Tian blamed the greedy cow farmers for all of this, that all the dairy cow farmers
supplied the milk to Sanlu were illegally adding melamine to the fresh milk to make
more money and they're greedy, they're disgusting, and obviously we didn't know until it's too
late.
Technically, the government does not require that we test for melamine.
It's unfortunate, but we don't just test for random chemicals across the board, unless it's required of us. They wish they could have done better. That's the whole thing. Some
is like, we wish, right? But we did everything that we're supposed to do. We do what the competitors
do. We wish we could have done more, but you know, but that's not entirely the truth. Is it?
During the trial, an Olympic sizedsized cover-up was exposed.
The company executives were made aware of a baby with kidney issues after drinking the
baby formula back in 2007.
10 months before all of this goes down.
The vice president of the company just waved it off as an individual case.
A problem with the baby has no correlation with San Lu.
That's what he told them.
Soon after, chairwoman Tian is made aware of complaints from all over China about kidney issues and the baby formula. She sets up a quality investigation
team, May 2008. They're screening for things that could possibly cause urine crystals and
kidney stones. And up until this point, they do not test for melamine. And up until this
point, I do think that Cherwoman Tian is like trying to do the right thing to a degree.
Or she's just doing the normal thing, like the bare minimum.
Which is investigating a claim, right?
She's doing more than the VP, I guess,
is what I was trying to say.
June 2008, the results come back
that a non-protein nitrogen was found in the baby powder.
It contained six times more non-protein nitrogen
than similar baby formula brands.
But nobody could tell the executives
what that non-protein nitrogen was.
Everyone was still quote, in the dark.
July 2008, someone on the investigation team
suspected melamine and they started testing for that.
They sent out 16 batches to be tested
by the local government's entry and exit inspection
and quarantine bureau.
15 of the 16 batches came back
with large amounts of melamine present.
Even the testing center was so concerned about how high the levels were that they called
Soundloo and they were like, Hey, what were those samples from?
Because I wouldn't even feed that to livestock.
And I know you're like a baby formula company.
So what's going on?
Soundloo stated honor.
And that's just like a, we're experimenting with different formulas.
That was like a product and development.
It's not made to the public.
And we're testing raw materials
because we were receiving not great raw materials.
So we're testing these farmers now.
We're trying to crack down on quality.
The center believes SanLiu and did not raise any alarms.
The same day that the results came back,
Chairman Tian held an emergency board meeting that lasted from 9pm to 4am
and for seven hours they came up with a game plan. PR.
They reached out and made a PR proposal to Baidu. Do you know Baidu?
Yeah, the Google of China. Exactly.
Sun Liu already spends a lot of money on Baidu for ads.
So they've got to, I'm sure, a very strong partnership with Baidu.
They come up with a PR proposal where they want Baidu to bury any negative websites or
search hits for Sun Liu.
They also want Baidu to source negative hits for Sun Liu competitors and algorithmically
place them at the top.
Yep.
Wow.
Baidu rejected and SanLu kept going.
So this is all happening like six days before the Olympics began.
Their secret meeting was August 1st.
The Olympics, well, the official game start August 8th.
Yeah.
Wait, Baidu rejected?
Yeah, Baidu rejected.
So this didn't happen with Baidu?
No.
Baidu rejected.
Now the government officials would not reject.
So before the Olympics, Sanlu reaches out
to all the government officials and is like,
hey, you need to help us because the Olympics are coming.
We're not just a random Chinese brand.
Do we need to remind you,
we are the milk of the Olympians. We're space milk. We're not just a random Chinese brand. Do we need to remind you we are the milk of the Olympians?
We're space milk!
We're astronaut milk!
Okay?
So do you want China to be an embarrassment?
To the whole world?
The 2008 Beijing Olympics was actually one of the most intense Olympics ever hosted.
China felt like they were being dragged through the mud by Western media outlets,
and every bad thing about their country
Which every big country has bad things were being blown up amplified and they were being ripped to shreds in Western media
So the government is essentially trying to do
This is like their marketing. This is like their PR. This is their time to show the world
We're not like that the Chinese people are great, right? So a lot of Chinese civilians were really excited about this. It's like time to be like, Hey guys, like please just give
us a chance. The Chinese people, they have as much control over their government as we
do likely less. So this is a chance for them to just be represented in a positive light
and show the whole world what their nation is really about. And there is a lot on the
line. 2008 was a rough
year economically for everyone. Then the Sichuan earthquake that killed over 87,000 people occurred.
That was another international embarrassment. So this, if they have a milk scandal right now
during the Olympics, it wasn't going to be good. So the government agreed to hush hush it until after the Olympics.
It wasn't until two weeks after the end of the Olympics that the first major newspaper
reported San Lu as the brand with the melamine in the formula and
that brand was poisoning babies.
Now, side note, remember the VP that jumped out of his window in the beginning of this case?
Well, thankfully he survived, not that I think that he had any intention of not surviving his apartment was on the fourth floor
He landed on a car and his injuries consisted of a fractured ankle
That's it just a fractured ankle, but for some reason he still showed up to court on a full stretcher
Yeah
January 22nd 2009 three sound Lou executives were sentenced to five to 15 years in prison.
15 other San Lu executives were sentenced to two to 15 years in prison.
Chairwoman Tian was sentenced to life in prison, but she will likely get out in 2027 on good
behavior.
Meanwhile, two dairy farmers that sold more than 900 tons of tainted milk to San Lu were both given the death
sons. 900 tons? Yeah. Wow. So the cows came crumbling down. Unfortunately, San Lu is
not a one-off situation. After they were exposed for lacing their baby formula
with melamine, the Chinese government started investigating. They found melamine in liquid milk, yogurt,
white rabbit milk candies, frozen desserts, cereal products, pastries, cakes, biscuits,
protein powders, processed foods. The government randomly tested 69 batches of baby formula
like different brands and 22 were found to contain high traces of melamine.
I mean, it was so bad that a lot of countries banned dairy products made in China from entering
their country. Over 22 companies were forced to set up a victims compensation fund. Collectively,
it had 127 million dollars, but I mean, it wasn't great. Level one was if you lost your
child completely and you would receive $28,000, which is nothing.
Level two is if your child had severe kidney issues
that required dialysis or surgery,
you would get a wild $4,288.
And level three is if you had to be hospitalized
but did not have invasive surgery,
just utter pain, $282.
But the worst part is the minute that you take even a dollar from the compensation fund,
you are forced in return to sign a document that states that you will never sue the company or
ever ask for another dollar in compensation ever again. It's a one-time shut-up deal.
And even then, it was so hard to get money.
Like, parents weren't even asking for a lot.
They just wanted their medical costs covered
by the government or by these companies, whoever,
and no one would give them the money.
Doctors would say, well, it's really hard to say 100%
that your problems were caused
by the melamine poisoning when you were a baby.
So the government is like, well,
if you can't prove it 100%, then you don't get money. It was ridiculous. More than 100 attorneys stepped forward to
volunteer to represent families in claims against Sun Lu. One parent who lost their child stated,
even if they offered me compensation, I'm not going to accept it. What do I need the money for
if my son is gone? These people were making a profit off of letting all of us die. Selling this
baby formula.
The worst slap in the face was that their son
wasn't even included in the official death toll
for this case.
A lot of parents pointed to the theory
that the official death toll for the infants
that passed by drinking melamine-lase formula
is inaccurate because the official death toll
given by the government is six.
Six babies.
Yeah. Six babies. And there's a lot of parents who are like,
no, my child died from that and we're not part of the official death toll.
So a lot of parents think it's really suspicious that many of the children died,
but were not included. There's speculation that the official death toll was kept down,
so that chairwoman Tian, who is incredibly influential and well connected
and has a lot of ties to the government,
would get life in prison rather than the death penalty.
Many of the victims' parents stated she should be shot.
One parent said, even if she dies 100 times over,
it won't lessen our hate.
And there was a massive ripple effect to all of this.
Illegal businesses were being set up
where baby formula was being imported in these mysterious giant shipping containers.
They were imported through Vietnam and distributed through China.
Because there was a sudden demand from Chinese civilians to purchase foreign baby formula.
Even to this day, I believe studies show that there is not a strong sentiment that is favorable for domestic baby formula brands.
Yeah, because people just don't trust it anymore.
Like even today, nobody, yeah,
no, you don't wanna buy like baby powder made in China.
And it became a global problem
because now all of a sudden all Chinese moms and dads
are like, well, we gotta get some foreign baby formula.
But the problem is all of these companies that are like, well, we gotta get some foreign baby formula. But the problem is all of these companies
that are in foreign countries,
they only make a certain amount.
Like they don't expect emergencies like this to happen.
So for example, if one of the biggest distributors
in the US, Abbott, wanted to suddenly supply that demand,
they might send America into a baby formula shortage.
So countries started banning the exporting
of baby formula into China. They didn't necessarily state that it's because of what's going on in China,
but like people were putting two and two together. The US randomly made a ban five to 10 cans per
person per day in the store. That's all you can buy. Australia four cans, UK two cans,
Macau two, Hong Kong two. And because of that, San Lu will just be a stain on the industry forever.
One citizen stated, it only takes one mouse poop to ruin the whole pot of porridge. Over 2,000 tons
of baby formula were seized from the San Lu warehouse, which is about six Boeing 747 planes
worth of baby formula that were all contaminated with melamine
Yeah, that's how much baby formula that they took from the warehouse
They recalled about nine thousand tons of baby formula and one city decided to go ahead and just dump five tons of San Luu Baby formula to get rid of it into the sewers
Which I don't know if that's like the best choice
But it took 30 minutes to dump it all.
And that is how one of the biggest dairy companies
in all of China, the Queen of the Cows,
came crumbling down.
What are your thoughts?
Do you really know what's in your food?
Please be safe and I will see you guys on Sunday
for the next episode.
Bye.