The contamination of baby food is not frequent because the quality controls of the infant feeding companies are increasingly exhaustive, but sometimes it happens, and then all the alarms are raised before the possibility of putting the lives of thousands of babies at risk .
In this case, in addition, the lives of other people are at risk, because this time the problem has not originated in the manufacturers of infant formulas, but in the multinational Fonterra, which has supplied a whey protein concentrate manufactured in New Zealand that is then used to make various products, including artificial milk for babies, contaminated, can produce botulism.
Botulism is caused by the bacteria Clostridium Botulinum Y It is a life-threatening disease It affects the muscles, paralyzing them and causing respiratory problems, among other symptoms. The concentrate produced by the multinational was sold to eight companies located in China, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand and Saudi Arabia.
The cause of the concentrate was contaminated is the presence of the bacteria in a pipe of the processing plant that, apparently, was dirty.
As soon as the news has been known, the withdrawal of the affected dairy products has begun and, from China, they have banned the importation of powdered milk from New Zealand and Australia, which is where the majority comes from, since 90 % of the milk powder imported last year arrived from New Zealand.
The name of the eight companies affected is not known, but the name of some of them. Is about Dumex Baby Food, a subsidiary of Danone dedicated to infant feeding, two subsidiaries of Wahaha Group, which is one of the largest beverage producers in China, a public company in the country, the Chinese subsidiary of Coke and companies dedicated to producing food for animals in New Zealand and Australia.
Hopefully they will remove potentially contaminated products as soon as possible and that the fact that the manufacturer had "dirty pipe" in its facilities should not be regretted. The lives of thousands of animals, people and babies are at stake and this is something that should never happen, and less after they had serious problems in China a few years ago. Remember that five years ago, more than 10,000 children were hospitalized for drinking contaminated artificial milk.
