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China's dairy farmers cry for help over spilt milk

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-09-21 16:36

SHIJIAZHUANG -- On the outskirts of Nantongye village, a huge yogurt plant is under construction. It is planned that it may take all fresh milk produced by more than 3,000 cows raised by one third of the village households.

The plant owner is the Sanlu Group, whose baby formula was found containing the toxic chemical melamine that caused more than 6,200 children nationwide to have kidney stones.

Dairy farmers at Nantongye village were long-term suppliers to Sanlu, the biggest dairy producer in northern Hebei Province and nationwide, though villagers say they did not sign contracts with the company.

The company built five stations in the village to collect fresh milk, but since last Sunday it has stopped buying from farmers as all Sanlu plants have been suspended from production since the scandal was revealed.

Most farmers raise cows in small farms covering not much more than a courtyard. Li Zhidong's 18 cows produce about 160 kg of milk a day. In the past week, her earnings have dropped by 330 yuan (48.5 US dollars) a day.

"I gave away the milk to family, friends and neighbors. Some feed it to their pigs. The rest I pour into the sewer," says Li, 56, who manages the farm with her husband. "All good milk. It's such a waste."

She has stopped feeding the cattle concentrated feed, giving them hay. Now they produce less milk each day.

"I have no choice but to cut costs," she says. "If the cows stop producing, it will take at least 10 months for them to give milk again."

Usually Li and her neighbors herd their cattle to a nearby milking station, where tankers collect the fresh milk and carry it to the plants.

"We did not add anything bad in the milk. We never even had the opportunity," Li says. "Those bad guys have put all of us in trouble."

Some of the 378 milk stations supplying Sanlu are like those in Nantongye village, directly run by the company itself, and others are owned by middlemen or big dairy farms.

Hebei police have arrested two brothers, surnamed Geng, who ran a station supplying Sanlu and charged them with adding melamine to milk.

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