• Home
  • Coca-Cola Capitalizes On Weak Milk Market by Charging Twice The Price For #GMO Milk-Based Drink
  • In The Mist Of A Global Water Crisis -- The EU Threatens Water Privatization
  • US Senate Kills Chances Of Labeling GMOs
  • Offshore Drilling in the Mediterranean
  • Plastic Islands Destroying Marine Life
  • Kept Under Wraps – Russian Oil Spills Are The Worst In The World
  • Why Labeling GMOs Is No Longer Good Enough
  • US Senate Kills Chances Of Labeling GMOs
  • Chem-Trails, GMOs and the World's Extreme Weather Events
  • Monsanto Encourages UK Manufacturers To Label GMOs
  • Monsanto Pays Millions $$ to Defeat California Prop 37
  • Monsanto Sells Their Aspartame Business to Pfizer
  • 2012 Farm Bill To Include Approval of All GE Crops
  • Close Ties With Monsanto Makes Selling GMOs Very Easy
  • US Industry Leaders Reject Mandatory Labeling of GMOs and Asbestos
  • Nina Federoff: Engineering Food For All
  • Much of the World Requires Labeling & Banning of GMOs, Why Not The United States?
  • Agent Orange - 40 Years Later
  • One Year After Fukushima...
  • Farming
  • The Infinite Variety & Beauty Of Sustainable Living
  • America's Homeless Children
  • How Bill Gates, Syngenta and Rockefeller Became Custodians of the Doomsday Crop Diversity Vault
  • 70% of Worlds Raw Chocolate Soon To Be Genetically Modified
  • Bluefin Tuna Raises Radiation Fears
  • China's Dairy Industry
  • Asbestos Exposure
  • Bill Gates:Decrease World's Population
  • GOP Uses “McCarthysim” To Stop Fracktivists? & January 29, 2012 Fracking Companies Promote Jobs Across The US Hoping To Conceal The Risks
  • Japan Faces The Same Whitewashing by the IAEA As Russia Did
  • Europe's Extreme Frost Gives Climate Deniers False Hope
  • The Gaia Reports Blog
  • News & Updates
  • Videos
  • Blog
The Gaia Reports by Theodora Filis

Imported Cattle and US Modeled Factory Farms Resuscitate China's Dairy Industry

5/29/2012

4 Comments

 
Picture
By Theodora FilisIn 2008, a food and safety scandal involving milk and infant formula, and other food materials and components adulterated with melamine, crippled China's dairy industry. An estimated 300,000 victims -- six infants dying from kidney stones and other kidney damage, and 860 babies hospitalized. 

The chemical appeared to have been added to milk to cause it to appear to have a higher protein content. In a separate incident four years before, watered-down milk had resulted in 13 infant deaths from malnutrition.This incident raised concerns over food safety, and political corruption in mainland China, damaging the reputation of China's food exports, with at least 11 countries stopping all imports of mainland Chinese dairy products.

Today, China has allocated a trillion dollars to expand agricultural production, and aims to be 80% self sufficient in food and agriculture over the next decade. For this purpose, China is subsidizing modern US intensive factory farms, and underwriting the cost of importing cattle from around the world to increase their dairy production.

Deng Jiu Qiang, founder and chairman of Modern Dairy, said one of his company's 15 farms, is financed by the US private equity firm KKR, along with other investors, modeled on American factory farms that Deng saw on a US tour a few years ago.

The world's largest milk exporter, New Zealand’s Fonterra, receives Chinese Government subsidies, to boost their dairy farms in China. Fonterra has opened two large dairies totaling 12,000 cows and is building two more dairies, as it plays a part in China's push to meet milk consumption.

According to Alex Frangos, reporter for the Wall Street Journal, “The animals' long nightmare starts on a harrowing journey overseas in ships, where they are confined tightly and cause multiple health issues that may result in death. Those buried at sea might be the luckiest cattle, because once the animals get through the 45-day quarantine, they will continue their confinement in “football-field-size sheds” that resemble electronics factories more than farms and are milked three times a day on “bovine merry-go-rounds.”

Wenonah Hauter, reported, Chinese farmers will need to rely on genetically modified feed – substantially increasing the cost to small farmer's. “Factory farm models have been a failure for public health, the environment and animal welfare in the US, just like it will be for China.”

Given a lack of domestic supply and growing demand from the dairy farming industry, China has an increasing demand for imported US alfalfa products. “This is an extra expense for US dairy farmers who are already squeezed, thanks to low dairy prices and industry consolidation that favors the biggest producers.” said Hauter.

New age music, including a version of “Time to Say Goodbye,” made famous by Andrea Bocelli, plays from loudspeakers while the cows are being milked. Chris Sun, KKR’S representative, says it is meant to calm the cows, though there is no scientific proof that it works. 

4 Comments
Minecraft link
7/14/2012 11:03:32 am

Once I originally commented I clicked the -Notify me when new feedback are added- checkbox and now every time a remark is added I get four emails with exactly the same comment. Is there any indicates you possibly can remove me from that service? Thanks!

Reply
Product Sourcing link
9/2/2012 02:41:58 pm

Nice and very interesting. Thank you for your sharing...........

Reply
Bryan link
5/22/2014 04:56:17 pm

I have no words to express how useful your blog was to me in completing my job work successful. Thanks a lot.

Reply
Tubing for dairy industry link
6/3/2016 01:28:35 am

Trelleborg design milk hoses for milking machine and milking robots. Get an overview of our engineering capabilities here.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Write something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview.

    Archives

    May 2012

    Categories

    All
    Alfalfa
    China
    Chinese Government
    Cows
    Dairy Industry
    Factory Farms
    Imported Cattle
    Infant Formula
    Melamine
    New Zealand
    Us

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.