Problem milk powder is not scary; covering up problems is what is truly scary
From the Feihe milk powder incident, we can see why some domestic milk powder companies have not emerged from the trough of the Sanlu milk powder incident: not only because quality problems have appeared again, but because they still deal with their own quality problems the way Sanlu did back then.
Recently, news of milk powder "problems" has once again set off a "butterfly effect": Feihe Dairy, which had always promoted itself with the slogan "consistently good milk powder," was exposed for product quality problems twice within two months, with goat milk powder becoming the "hardest-hit area," and Shaanxi "Feihe Guanshan," the leader in the goat milk powder industry, was on the list. According to the investigation results of Guanshan Dairy, an operational error during the production cleaning stage caused acid-base cleaning liquid to leak into the concentrated milk tank, producing a reaction that generated nitrate, which made the nitrate indicator of the above batch of products unqualified.
Although the problems with Feihe milk powder cannot represent all domestic milk, this quality problem has undoubtedly once again lowered the confidence of Chinese people, who are still nervous about problem milk powder, in domestic milk powder. And the endless milk powder safety incidents before this clearly failed to make Feihe "learn its lesson": several days after being named by the State Food and Drug Administration, there is still no clear explanation of questions such as the product recall situation for Feihe Guanshan milk powder, who the raw material suppliers are, and where exactly the related problems occurred.
If previous quality problems could still be blamed on "oversights in the production process," then after being named, what reason is there for self-reflection and resolution to remain absent for so long? With milk powder like this, how can it win consumers' trust?
It can be seen that no country's milk powder can always have zero problems. Domestic milk powder did indeed have quality problems before, but it also cannot be denied that in recent years there has indeed been great overall improvement. In terms of quality alone, many domestic milk powders may not be worse than international milk powder brands, but why can they still not stop consumers from "voting with their feet" for "foreign milk powder"? The reason still lies in the issue of reputation, not because the quality is poor, but because of the attitude toward quality problems.
To some extent, after a problem arises with milk powder, how a company gets consumers in its own country or other countries to still trust its milk powder depends most crucially on its attitude toward problem milk powder. And from the Feihe milk powder incident, we can see why some domestic milk powder companies have not emerged from the trough of the Sanlu milk powder incident: not only because quality problems have appeared again, but because they still deal with their own quality problems the way Sanlu did back then. Some domestic milk powder companies still have not learned how to face their own quality problems. Instead of proactively disclosing the problems, announcing recalls, apologizing to consumers, and compensating them, they respond passively and cover up whatever they can.
If the relevant companies still cannot "learn their lesson," then with Sanlu destroyed yesterday and Feihe's wings broken today, tomorrow another company may still fall into a vortex of problems and lose consumers' trust