How dare the Chinese try and keep their babies safe
EVERY other week sees a new outraged mum posting pictures of Asian people stocking up on baby formula, writes Claire Harvey. The hide of them, trying to give their babies the safest food.
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THE hide of it.
Chinese people — or people who look Chinese — loading tins and tins of baby formula into their supermarket trolleys.
No respect. No consideration for others — like mums with babies who need special formula because of intolerances. Totally disregarding Australian values. That’s the accepted wisdom here in Australia.
Every few weeks, some vigilante outraged mum will photograph a bunch of furtive people of Asian appearance stockpiling cans of top-shelf gear and stashing it in their hatchbacks. She’ll upload it to her Facebook mummies’ group and righteous fury will ensue. Actually I think we should be on their side. We should be backing those sneaky Chinese shoppers. We should applaud them.
Because the people of China, no matter what the governments of its ‘allies’ like Australia try to pretend, are trapped under the thumb of a totalitarian regime that has repeatedly trashed consumers’ rights to safe products, endangering the lives of children and everyone else.
In 2008 at least six babies died and thousands were made seriously ill with poisoning by melamine, the chemical extract found in massive batches of Chinese-made baby formula.
The government’s response to that was to lay criminal charges against some manufacturing executives, who were deliberately adding melamine — the same stuff used to make plasticky bottles and containers — to trick regulators into thinking the formula had more protein content than it really did.
That scandal clearly didn’t have much of a chilling effect, because the consumer scandals have just kept rolling. There’s been tofu processed in sewage to accelerate the fermentation process. Lamb meat that was actually rat. Chemicals and carcinogens in everything from noodles to soup broth.
The latest scandal relates to vaccines, with the revelation one major vaccine manufacturer has produced substandard and ineffective rabies vaccine, as well as selling more than 250,000 doses of faulty diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough) and tetanus vaccine with the potential to kill and seriously harm children.
This vaccine is compulsory in China, by the way. I’m a passionate believer in the value of vaccination as a public health measure. I hate stories that make anyone worried about vaccinating their kids, because in Australia all evidence shows our vaccines are safe and effective. I believe everyone should get their children immunised.
This is just the latest in a series of major vaccine scandals in China, and every time the Government has vowed to take action against lax manufacturers and sloppy regulators.
You’ll often hear Australians whinging about the ‘nanny state’ impinging upon their freedoms.
China’s oppressive communism is giving way to a plutocracy where the market is rampant, apparently undisturbed by anything like proper government oversight.
Not surprisingly, Chinese people don’t have much faith that anything will change.
They’re finding themselves an alternative — clean, safe baby formula from Australian and New Zealand milk.
If I had a family member or friend with a baby in China, I’d be doing exactly the same thing, no matter who photographed or tried to shame me.