OZDairy apologises to China for incorrect baby formula use-by date
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Version 0 of 1. An Australian baby formula company has apologised to Chinese consumers for a labelling “typo” after it was accused on China’s state television of allegedly tampering with use-by dates on its products. Melbourne-based OZDairy faced claims it had changed use-by dates on its Oz Milko powdered milk products, after the date on nearly 20,000 tins was allegedly found to conflict with another on the Chinese label, which appeared to have been extended by a year. More than 900 tins had been “detained” at customs in Beijing, CCTV reported. OZDairy apologised to Chinese consumers, but managing director Christopher Murphett said the formula had not expired and was mislabelled by mistake. “The wrong date was put on the label, not on the can,” he said. “It has nothing to do with the quality of our product. I’ve apologised, we’ve addressed this over the past three weeks, and everybody understands that the mistake was made internally.” He said the mislabelled formula never made it into stores and had been recalled. Cans would now be printed with a single label in Chinese and English to avoid the same mistake being made in the future. “It’s not acceptable to have the mistake made, and we’re paying the price, but it was just a typo that unfortunately no one noticed,” he said “We’ve been made a bit of a martyr over it, but it’s a serious problem in China.” Fears over tampered infant formula run high in China after a 2008 scandal in which a number of local manufacturers were found to be adulterating their milk products with melamine, a toxic chemical, to boost protein levels. Almost 300,000 babies fell ill and six died from kidney damage. A dairy farmer and a milk salesman were executed over the scandal, which the World Health Organisation condemned as “a large-scale intentional activity to deceive consumers for simple, basic, short-term profits”. The federal department of agriculture confirmed that OZDairy exported two wrongly labelled shipments of baby formula to China, but said: “The manufacturer has corrected the problem and taken corrective action to prevent it reoccurring. This action has been verified by the state dairy regulator. “The department has been advised that, while the labels on the products exported to China were not in compliance, the use-by dates had not been tampered with (as has been suggested) and there are no safety concerns with the product.” Murphett said infant formula was “the new white gold” in China, with about 1.5m tins imported into the country each day. “Nobody wants to be in the mining industry any more, they want to be in the dairy industry,” he said. Tins of powdered milk in China can fetch up to three times the price they sell for in Australia. OZDairy’s infant formula was among nine other products singled out for poor consumer practices by CCTV’s 315 Gala, a program aired each year in China on 15 March, World Consumer Rights Day. Others included a Nikon D600 camera that produced black spots and a state-owned technology company that implanted spyware in people’s phones. |