Babies In Beijing - Poisoned?!

I already have every intention of breastfeeding my future children if at all possible, and here is yet another reason to motivate me: Formula, like any other commercial product, is subject to quality oversights within the industry. I want to breastfeed for the same reason that I prefer to cook (and eventually, grow) my own food: because I know where it's been.

Remember that awful scare when melamine got into various pet foods and thousands of cats and dogs were sickened or even died because of it? Yeah, well it happened again, only this time the melamine was deliberately added to infant formula, and three babies have already died and over a thousand more are suffering.

China's largest producer of milk, Mengniu Dairy Group, announced the recall of three batches of formula made in January after tests showed they were contaminated with melamine, said Li Changjiang, China's director of quarantine and inspection.

Though it should not be added to food ingredients, suppliers in China sometimes put it in food to make a product appear to be protein rich. Melamine has nitrogen, and standard tests for protein in bulk food ingredients measure levels of nitrogen.

More than 1,300 infants are hospitalized with illnesses including malnutrition, kidney stones and acute renal failure.

Apparently the formula was watered down by the manufacturers to save money, then melamine was added to the diluted formula so that it could pass quality checks for protein. The two men who contaminated the formula are facing the possibility of execution.

I'd like to think that such a severe quality failure with such serious repercussions wouldn't happen in the US, but I work in Quality Assurance myself. No system is perfect, and one person can perfectly fuck shit up on a massive level with just a little bit of carelessness. The more control I have over what is going into my infant's stomach, the happier and less anxious I will be.