Buyers beware

Lead paint in toys you can understand. Even formaldehyde in candy is edible and can be digested, in minute doses, figuratively and literally – no need for embalming fluid if you get poisoned. And cardboard pulp in dimsum is at least biodegradable.

But melamine in infant formula? You have to take your hat off to the innovative sickos who thought of spiking milk with melamine, an ingredient in making plastic products including those attractive, durable (and cheap!) dinner ware, to boost the protein content. Their punishment should include drinking a glass of melamine-tainted milk for a year, three times a day.

You’d think the Chinese would have learned their lesson from the recall last year of melamine-tainted pet food, whose protein content, specified in the packaging, is used by many people as a guide for feeding pets. This was in the United States, where the tainted pet food was found to be the culprit in the deaths of several dogs and cats. Or maybe this case was where the Chinese milk manufacturers got their idea.

We like to believe that the melamine scare will teach the Chinese, and other manufacturers particularly in the developing world, that there’s a limit to cutting corners.

But don’t count on this. It’s not that the Chinese are slow learners when it comes to quality control, and it’s not that the sickos don’t get punished. They in fact get caught, and the shutdown of their businesses is the least of their punishment.

The problem lies not just in the supply but also in the demand. Fast-paced lifestyles and the soaring cost of living have created a huge and ever growing market for the cheapest food available with a shelf life that can last at least a year at room temperature, or forever in the freezer. Few people enjoy shopping every day just to ensure the freshness of their food, and fewer people have the time to do this.

New packaging technology allows food to retain freshness through freezing in vacuum-packed containers. But household freezers have limited space, reserved mostly for raw meat and seafood.

So we buy processed food, bread with improvers, powdered milk, dry dog food that can last two years, candy that can last 10 years — stuff that can be forgotten in the pantry for weeks in the tropical heat and still be edible when opened.

There is no way that kind of shelf life can be possible without using extenders, preservatives, improvers — call them what you want, they’re still the food equivalent of embalming fluid. 

The Chinese stopped using formaldehyde in the popular White Rabbit candy, and switched to melamine, as Singapore has just found out.

The long shelf life is good for mass production and brings down costs. Because the Chinese have proved themselves to be the world’s experts in mass-producing affordable consumer goods, and because ordinary people cannot conceive of toxic ingredients being included in human food, unusually cheap food products from China generally do not arouse suspicion.

We simply think that with dirt-cheap labor costs and a Chinese tradition of competing through the lowest profit margins possible, we get better value for our money if we buy Chinese.

And so Chinese milk brands, whose entry into the Philippine market was marked by “buy one, take one” promos in certain major supermarket chains, could have quickly gained immense popularity among the millions of poor Filipinos who otherwise cannot afford infant formula and milk for their growing children. 

One of the brands pulled out of the market was marked, in tiny print, “Made in PRC” — strictly not mislabeling, but it could have fooled a lot of Filipinos, who might have thought it meant Philippine Refining Co. Filipinos are used to buying milk and other dairy products sourced from Australia, New Zealand, the US and Europe.

Now the entire milk industry is in trouble. And doubts about the safety of Chinese products have been revived, especially with reports yesterday that one of the major Chinese milk manufacturers had known since late last year about the use of melamine in its products.

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Will this milk scare change attitudes about cheap processed foods?

It would probably make discerning consumers take the trouble of looking at the fine print for the origin of dairy products, and shun anything made in China, “PRC” or even “ROC.”

But for many other consumers in need, a return of cheaper milk products on supermarket shelves, or even milk repacked and resold without brands or other markings in the streets, would be considered a signal that the products are safe for consumption.

This is where efficient government regulation comes in. If consumers do not know enough to stay away from unsafe products, the government should protect the consumers. But too often, especially in developing countries, there aren’t enough resources for consumer protection.

Nearly three decades ago there were already news stories about repacked, unbranded milk being sold in plastic bags in the streets of Quiapo. Government authorities at the time cracked down on the sale of the unregulated products.

Today the sale of the repacked products continues, and now it’s not just unbranded milk but also food flavorings and other ingredients for processed food that are being sold in various outlets in Manila.

The rule of the market is buyers beware, and sometimes they do — such as when stories come out of babies dying from tainted milk.