Where exactly does the root cause of frequent milk powder safety incidents lie?

Milk powder is in trouble again! Following the March notification of counterfeit Abbott and Beingmate milk powder incidents this year, the Shanghai Food and Drug Administration recently announced another major food safety incident: criminal suspect Liu, through Shanghai Jiawai International Trading Co., Ltd., which he controlled, sold 276 tons of expired New Zealand-produced "Fonterra" dairy products for baking from inventory to locations across the country.

At present, authorities have seized 109.2 tons of the products involved, but the whereabouts of 166.8 tons of expired products remain unknown. Investigation confirmed that, in order to reduce losses on the expired New Zealand-produced dairy products for baking, Liu, the former head of Shanghai Jiawai, used Nantong Huayuan Feed Company to process the accounts and sold the 276 tons of expired New Zealand-produced dairy products for baking from inventory to multiple companies as well as downstream distributors in Jiangsu, Henan, Qinghai and other places, selling them across the country through wholesale and online stores.

It is worth noting that the controlling shareholder of Shanghai Jiawai is Caogen Zhiben, an industrial investment platform invested in by the New Hope Group. In addition, Xi Gang, president of Caogen Zhiben and president of New Hope Dairy, is also one of its individual shareholders. However, after the incident, all parties came forward one after another to distance themselves from responsibility. But although Caogen Zhiben and New Hope Dairy repeatedly emphasized that the illegal sale of expired dairy products was Liu's personal act, as the investor and controlling shareholder, Caogen Zhiben failed to effectively supervise the company and its personnel, and this is indeed an unavoidable responsibility of Caogen Zhiben and the New Hope Group. This view has been expressed by many industry insiders.

And just as all parties were shifting blame, consumers were worried about those 166.8 tons of expired products whose "whereabouts are unknown." These expired products were sold across the country through wholesale and online stores, posing a threat to consumers' health and once again damaging consumers' confidence in the dairy industry.

In fact, since the Sanlu milk powder incident in September 2008, milk powder safety issues have never left the public eye. Infant formula, once considered the safest "food for children," has been exposed for quality and safety problems year after year. After the "Sanlu incident," Chinese people's confidence in domestic milk powder fell to a low point, and many young parents turned their attention to overseas brands. However, foreign milk powder has also successively become the protagonist in safety incidents. Almost all mainstream foreign milk powder brands sold on the domestic market have not been spared and have all been involved in quality problems to a greater or lesser extent.

However, compared with foreign milk powder, domestic milk powder has suffered greater damage because of quality problems, causing consumer trust in domestic milk powder to decline. Moreover, this trend currently shows no sign of stopping; it is gradually spreading from large cities to second- and third-tier cities, and there is no possibility of reversing the situation quickly. A head of a domestic milk powder company witnessed the "golden decade" of domestic milk powder and also personally saw domestic milk powder fall into the awkward position of not being trusted. He once lamented to me: the quality of national-brand milk powder has already reached world-class levels, and it is fully capable of competing with foreign milk powder, but consumer confidence is just too hard to restore!

At present, the market capacity of domestic infant formula is around 80 billion yuan, and it is expected to reach 100 billion yuan within 5 years. With the implementation of the milk powder formula registration system, small brands will gradually withdraw starting in the second half of the year, and "fake foreign devils" will also disappear. These brands will vacate a very large portion of market share. If domestic milk powder wants to gain this market share, it urgently needs to rebuild consumer confidence.

However, domestic milk powder's efforts to rebuild consumer confidence have been hindered by repeated milk powder safety incidents. The reason safety problems occur frequently in the milk powder industry is, to a large extent, due to shortcomings and loopholes in food safety supervision. A commentator article previously published in People's Daily hit the nail on the head in pointing out where the problem lies: confidence is not "emphasized" into existence, but is built up by one genuine brand after another, a complete set of effective regulatory systems, and open and transparent governance processes one after another.

The "strictest supervision" of infant formula requires the concerted efforts of regulatory authorities, companies and the public. Regulatory authorities need to hang the "sword of Damocles" high and use ruthless action and a more transparent mechanism to protect consumers; milk powder companies should do a good job in quality control and produce good milk powder; after consumers discover problematic milk powder, they should actively report it to regulatory authorities.