Hanoi - Vietnamese officials vowed Thursday to stop dairy
farmers from pouring away their unwanted milk, even though consumers
frightened by the Chinese melamine scare have stopped buying it.
Vietnamese press this week have reported numerous incidents of
dairy farmers pouring excess milk into rivers or onto roadways.
Vietnamese milk consumption has dropped sharply since the discovery
this fall that world milk supplies had been contaminated by Chinese
milk powder tainted with the industrial chemical melamine.
Authorities announced Wednesday that state milk companies had been
ordered to buy up all the milk produced by the country's dairy
farmers, regardless of demand. They say farmers will not be allowed
to dump milk.
'I consider it a crime,' said Dr Hoang Kim Giao, director of
Vietnam's Animal Husbandry Department. 'Why don't they boil the milk
and deliver it to somebody? While many people need it, why do they
pour it away? I consider such conduct a crime, such conduct is
uncivilized.'
Giao said farmers had deliberately held back milk and dumped it
only when reporters were present, to build media support for
government compensation for lower milk prices.
But farmers say the dumping is no publicity stunt. They say
reduced purchases by dairy companies leave them with tons of excess
milk every week, which they must dispose of after it reaches the
three-day sell-by limit.
'We can store 3 to 4 tons of milk at each storage point,' said
Hoang Trong Thuyen, 69, chairman of the dairy collective of Phu Dong
village outside Hanoi. 'But the dairy companies only buy about one
and a half tons, and some days they don't come at all.'
Thuyen said average dairy farmers in his village are spending as
much to feed their cows as they earn selling milk. He said if the
situation did not improve, many would sell their cows for slaughter.
Meanwhile, the price of a dairy cow has dropped from almost 2,000
dollars before the melamine scandal to some 400 dollars.
Dozens of teams of government inspectors conducting nationwide
surveys over the past three months have pronounced Vietnam's milk
supply safe.
Several suppliers, including state-owned Hanoimilk, have been
found to have low, non-threatening levels of melamine in some of
their products due to imported Chinese milk powder. Those products
have been recalled.
But Vietnamese consumers have not gone back to buying milk in
anything like the quantities they once did.
Vietnamese press quoted Hanoimilk's director Wednesday as saying
his factory was running at 50 per cent of its normal capacity.
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