Melamine alert: Fishy.

In case you were wondering, the plastic-y contaminant hasn't gone away. Although candy lovers can take heart knowing that White Rabbit is back on the shelves (along with signs that say something to the effect of "Now melamine-free, we swear!"), four Chinese egg brands have been found contaminated with the chemical, and Shanghai is inspecting fish feed at 10 local plants. The addition of melamine to animal feed has been a common practice and an "open secret" across China for years, an anonymous insider was quoted as saying in the Nanfang Daily, Xinhua News Service and, tellingly, the CPP's mouthpiece of choice, The People's Daily (tellingly because this is the same news source that disarmingly reported THE NEW MILK IS TOTALLY OKAY, GUYS--NOTHING TO SEE HERE. So if they're reporting bad news...the news is pretty bad).

The government has put new regulations in place officially limiting the amount of melamine allowed in food products and is promising better inspections and tougher penalties. But the emerging cases of contamination demonstrate both how widespread melamine's use has been as a false protein booster, and how deep the cover-up got. Dalian Hanwei Enterprise Group, the country's leading egg processor and one of the four with melamine in its eggs, has said it was alerted to the melamine contamination Sept. 27--almost a month before it went public with the problem. It appears both the Chinese government and the dairy companies themselves were aware of the milk-powder contamination months before the products were recalled in early September.

Not exactly reassuring news if you're buying, well, just about anything edible that could maybe contain something from China.

One interesting result of the whole melamine scandal, though, is that at least two private lawsuits have come out of it. This wouldn't seem strange in almost any other country, but civil suits are extremely rare here. Thanks both to a capricious court system--put it this way: It makes George W. Bush's judicial appointments look like a hands-off approach--and low levels of consumer activism and outrage, you just don't see people turning around to sue the company that sold them a faulty stereo/car/bicycle/non-earthquake-proof school for their kids.

Or at least, you didn't.

But two lawsuits have emerged from the fallout of the melamine scandal: One involves parents from Guangdong whose 11-month-old son who developed kidney stones after drinking Sanlu's milk--they're claiming $132,000 in compensation from the dairy company; the other was launched by parents from Henan, suing Sanlu for $22,000 after their 14-month-old son got kidney stones. Lawyers involved in both cases have complained of government pressure to withdraw the suits, and as far as I can tell it still isn't clear if the regional courts will allow the cases to go through. If they do, however, that's pretty huge: It will mean not only that the widespread contamination scandal has touched a raw enough nerve that people are acting on their anger; it also means they feel empowered enough--and have enough confidence in the court system--to act on it through legal challenges.

(Conversely, several families, apparently equally outraged but with less faith in China's tolerance for lawsuits, are bringing their case to the United States: Qingdao Shengyuan Milk Co. Ltd., a Qingdao-based company whose products were found to contain melamine, has a subsidiary in Delaware, and the families have gotten themselves a Maryland lawyer to help them pursue the case. Interesting. And legalistically convoluted.)



In the meantime, I'm going to hope my kidneys have a reeeeaaallllly high plastic tolerance.