Chinese Milk Producer Pays to Have Negative Publicity Censored

It may seem like I am picking on China today, but they are just putting themselves in the spotlight with yet an another controversy regarding Internet censorship . Australian news TheWest.com.au reported that a PR company acting on behalf of Chinese milk producer Sanlu, asked Baidu, China's leading search engine, to censor and stifle any negative publicity about tainted milk....twice.

Sanlu agreed to buy $640,000 worth of advertising from the search engine, as long as Baidu would censor and screen any negative press associated with the milk scandal. Thousands of infants have been hospitalized, with four deaths, with kidney illness after drinking Sanlu's product. The milk produced by Sanlu was tainted with melamine, which was used to "add" protein to watered down milk. Without going into very complex chemistry details, melamine is not good. It is 66% Nitrogen and has flame retardant properties, which can easily be turned into plastics, glues, and a ton of other such products. It is somewhat common to use melamine to cover up and mask low levels of protein, but adds no nutritional value.

Sanlu has since ceased production, but without first trying to bribe Baidu. Of course it is important to keep in mind that Baidu does abide by Chinese Internet laws, so it is possible the Chinese version of Baidu has been censoring content based on the regulations in place. It is bad enough that the Board of Directors at Sanlu need to water down the milk so they can increase their profit, but adding melamine to fool the tests is just ridiculous. Why would they take the risk, especially since it is common knowledge (in that industry) that melamine causes renal failure and kidney stones? And just to boot, the melamine they used wasn't even the purest grade since that kind would have been too expensive to use. Sanlu used lower grade melamine that could contain urea and ammonia. At least poison the country with the best toxins you can find...