#336: Poisoned Baby Formula TURNED 300k Kids Into “BIG HEAD BABIES” 01:12:36

Yes, cool. Cool.

Bada bing, bada boom.

Something very strange was happening in China. I mean, not all of China, but a small city called Fuyang City. News reports started coming out about, quote, big head babies in Fuyang. They called it a scandal. They called it the big head baby scandal of Fuyang City. I mean, there were stories that people would travel across China to go to Fuyang and they'd be walking on the streets and they would see these families on the street begging for help, begging for donations. Please help my child.

And then the passerbys would be like, I don't know what's going on. Can I take a look at your child? They would pull back the blanket or the parents would pull the baby out of the stroller and they would notice six month old infants whose heads were becoming larger than full size watermelons.

and they would be taken aback. I mean, not only because this child looked like they were in excruciating pain, but because this wasn't even the first child with this condition that they had seen in town recently. I mean, none of the children were born with a genetic disorder. Their parents stated that they had, quote, normal-sized heads before one day their heads just started swelling, or they called it ballooning. They didn't even know why. I mean, it's very clear, though, statistically,

Something very strange was happening to the babies in Fuyang. But what? The answer will result in 300,000 injured children, many dead, seven government officials publicly removed from their positions, 20 people sentenced to prison, and two people sentenced to death by the courts.

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Now, as always, full show notes are available at RottenMangoPodcast.com. But just a quick disclaimer, I think it's very important to note that we recognize what a privilege it is to have the freedom of choice when it comes to food. Our intention is to not speak over those facing food insecurities. That is an epidemic on a global scale. Our intention here is just to provide context for the experiences that these families affected in today's case had.

And because xenophobia has become such a huge problem, I mean, even more so now than before, I would like to reiterate that this is not a Chinese problem. This is a problem that's happened in the United States before as well. I mean, this is happening all across the world. And I want to say that nobody else was more negatively impacted by this than Chinese citizens.

So keep in mind the Chinese citizens, the Chinese civilians, the consumers are different entities than the Chinese government. They are not synonymous with one another. So with that being said, let's get into it. It's hard to say what Mr. Wang was thinking that day. He's standing inside of his house. He's too anxious to sit down. He's too anxious to lie down. He just wants things to be over and done with. He's standing in front of his apartment window, staring outside,

And he was being blamed for the dead babies. I mean, why? Why was he being blamed for the dead babies? All the parents are blaming him. The whole nation sees him as some sort of sick, twisted, sadistic baby killer. He's the vice president for one of the biggest companies in China for crying out loud. He should not be treated this way.

This was not supposed to be how his life goes. He was supposed to have the money, the prestige. He's not supposed to have a death sentence trial looming over his head for the death of babies. Mr. Wang contemplated what his life had become. And then he very slowly opened the window and flung himself out.

He was one of the executives present at the secret meeting on August 1st, 2008. The secret meeting that took seven hours. 100 days of hell started when the CEO of this massive conglomerate got the results back that their product tested positive for deadly amounts of a chemical. We sent out a batch. The results came back. 15 out of the 16 samples have incredibly high levels, enough to kill.

The CEO of the company took that report into the conference room and shut the door and none of the executives were allowed out until 4 a.m. the next morning. During the first hour of the secret meeting, a pact of silence was implemented. If you talk, we all go down. If you talk, I'm going to take you down with me.

Once the pact was made, the rest of the night focused on the cover-up plan. It was being hatched. Each executive picked up their phones and called the most influential person that they knew in their contacts. Government officials, PR reps, mayors, CEOs of massive media companies. Pull some strings. Milk every connection that you have. You whip out every dirty little trick if that's what it takes. You know a secret about an official? You use it now. Blackmail?

extortion, we're not above it. This is an all hail Mary. Do you guys get the message? Either this works or we're all going to be cellmates. Once the right calls and threats were made, everybody was on board. The coverup was initiated. They just had one last thing on the meeting agenda. Edit the test results, black out that word and replace it with substance A.

Nobody can really know what's in their products. They are, after all, a sponsor of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. They are, after all, the preferred choice for Olympians.

Just a few months prior to the secret board meeting, May 12th, 2008, a magnitude 8 earthquake struck Sichuan province in northwestern China. The earthquake was probably the 14th deadliest earthquake known to humankind, killing more than 87,000 people. And usually, in like the absolute darkest moments of history, sometimes, not all the time, sometimes, the world does come together for help.

So regardless of diplomatic relations, everybody starts reaching out. They start sending people to Sichuan. Finland sent enough tents to house 200,000 displaced civilians, along with 30,000 blankets. Japan's rescue teams were one of the first foreign groups to enter Sichuan. The Philippines sent medical teams. South Korea dispatched a 41-person international rescue team. Over 1.3 million volunteers from China and from around the world, they gathered at Sichuan to help.

A total of $10 billion was donated to help with the civilians, which, side note, please let me know if you want me to cover this case because the devastation was linked to a ton of actual crimes. It wasn't just an earthquake. And the $10 billion relief fund, a good chunk of it, was stolen.

But I digress. In that moment, people are trying to help. America sent relief and supplies. American companies came together to create a fund of over $30 million to send over to the civilians. Chinese companies rallied. They donated millions of dollars. One dairy giant in China even donated $2 million worth of milk powders and baby formula. I mean, this is all hands on deck.

Everybody wants to help. But there was a very alarming pattern emerging after the earthquake dust settles. Children in Sichuan were becoming gravely ill. Melamine looks like cocaine. And just like cocaine, if you snort a lot of it, it's going to kill you.

You can buy a pound of the white odorless powder on Amazon for $50, but I'm not sure why you would really need it. Melamine is a raw industrial compound. It's a really important substance that we're pretty much surrounded by this everywhere in our day-to-day lives. It's in everything. Plastic food containers, cooking utensils, paper, chopsticks,

Melamine is everywhere. It's even used for laminate floors and whiteboard coatings. And it is totally safe. If you have a melamine plate, it's perfectly safe to eat off of that plate or a plastic food container with melamine. They're all safe unless you heat it up.

Heat brings out the melamine compounds and then it just leaches into your food. That's why a lot of melamine plates and bowls or plastic products with melamine, it says do not microwave, not microwave safe. It's not just because it's going to melt in the microwave. It's because you will be unknowingly eating melamine with your pasta for dinner.

It's odorless, it's tasteless, you wouldn't even really know, you wouldn't even taste it. Now, how much melamine would come out of microwaving your plate once? I'm not sure. But high levels of ingested melamine are super dangerous. Symptoms include blood in the urine, inability to urinate completely for days at a time. It's not like you lose the feeling that you have to go pee. You feel like your bladder is about to burst, but you cannot urinate. It will not come out no matter how much you push. It's stuck in there.

kidney infections and it could through all these complications ultimately lead to death you could die by melamine poisoning

And after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, children in that region and all over China, they started experiencing those types of symptoms. There were speculations that melamine was heated during the earthquake that maybe from all the debris in the buildings and all the buildings that crumbled because melamine is also used in concrete, it's maybe being leached into the water supply. Maybe it's tainting the water supply. Maybe it's tainting the air. Maybe it's up in the air. It's hot. May, Sichuan, it's heating. Mm-hmm.

Everything's getting steamed, it's in the air, and then all the children are breathing in the melamine dust, and maybe they're a bit more sensitive than adults. I mean, what else could explain the sudden strange symptoms in the children after the earthquake?

A few months later, a man by the name of Mr. Wang posted on an internet forum. Now, this is not to be confused by the vice president of the secret meeting, Mr. Wang. This is a regular civilian, Mr. Wang. We're just going to call him Wang. Now, the post starts, experiencing this event was like experiencing a long night. It's like having a bad dream. It's very difficult to reveal the truth unless there's a major incident, like the Fuyang Big Head Baby incident.

Everyone's like, what is this man talking about? He continues, my 13-year-old daughter has been complaining about stomach issues, which would not be the most alarming thing in the world, right? But one day she comes to him and says, dad, I have crystals in my pee.

He's like, what on earth are you talking about? You have crystals in your pee? Like, what kind of crystals? The next time she used the restroom, she didn't flush and she went to go get her dad. And she's like, there's crystals in my pee again. Come, come look. Wang goes to investigate. And sure enough, there's tiny little crystals at the bottom of the toilet. Little stones. They're just sitting there. But also, her pee is a very strange color. It's like a dark maroon.

murky yellow color. It's not just a dark yellow, which would indicate that she's dehydrated, but it's murky. Why does it look like it would almost be thick? Wang has no idea what's really going on, but he knows that is not normal. So he starts investigating. He even posts on this forum to ask for help. And some commentators, before reading the whole thing, they jumped onto the melamine. They're like, it's gotta be melamine poisoning. That's what it sounds like. It sounds like it, doesn't it?

But Mr. Wang continued. He's like, I know it's a little strange, but I do have a strange habit. My whole family does. I'll buy a ton of milk powder or sometimes even baby formula for my 13-year-old daughter and even my elderly parents.

because in his mind he's thinking if you're gonna get all your nutrients delivered in a quick easy fashion that you can keep up with every single day like a 13 year old like an elderly person like they don't have patience they don't have time i mean sometimes even the hunger to eat all that food that gives you all the nutrients that's too much so he just assumed milk powder or baby formula would be the healthiest it's jam-packed with nutrients for growing babies

But he noticed there was a direct correlation between every single time his daughter would drink the baby formula and then she would have these debilitating stomach cramps and little pebbles in her urine. She would be screaming on the toilet because it started to hurt to urinate. And he said he was just confused because the only thing that makes sense after all this investigation that he's been doing is the baby formula.

He even reached out to the company and asked, "Hey, do you guys have a recall for this baby formula right now?" They said, "No, but you should send us all your product."

It was a very fascinating response. Now, originally, when this gets posted, there were no responses like nobody cared at all. And the people that did, they actually hated on him. They said, don't be posting these allegations about such a wonderful brand unless you know exactly what you're talking about. It could be a wide plethora of different things that could be causing your daughter's pee to have pebbles in it. It's not the baby formula brand.

There were people defending this company. And this was probably one of the biggest companies in China of all time.

Do you know the saying in the business world? It's called you conquer the three deer. So in China, they call it the three deer. You conquer central China or a large region of China. Be the biggest brand there. I mean, that's already tens of millions of people because China is a huge, huge nation. Then you conquer the whole country of China. That's over a billion people. You be the nation's industry leader. And then the third deer, the very last one that you have to hunt down and conquer is

Global domination. You conquer the world. Because if you can conquer China, you can conquer the world. Dear one, conquer the region. Sichuan province population, 83 million people. How do you win the hearts of 83 million people in China?

You could, I guess, if you sell baby formula, for example, or milk powder, you could lower your prices for a while. But that's not winning anybody's love or loyalty. It's winning their wallets for the moment. The minute that you raise your price to make higher profits, they're going to all leave you. Or someone new is going to come in and have even lower prices and they're going to leave you.

You could try and create the most amazing advertising campaign and sign someone that's massive from Sichuan, a huge celebrity, try to be in their favors, but that's still not guaranteed. And it's going to be very pricey. I mean, you're talking tens of millions of dollars. If you're looking at someone that has that much influence over 83 million people, that's

Chairman Tian, one of the biggest executives in the dairy world, decided to wait for the perfect opportunity to strike. Instead of trying to force a whole region of China to love her,

She would wait until they needed her. In 2008, the Sichuan region of China was hit with one of the deadliest earthquakes in human history, like we were just talking about. Out of the 90,000 dead, at least 5,300 of them were students in school. Another 375,000 civilians were injured. I mean, it was the 14th deadliest earthquake in recorded global history.

Chairwoman Tian knew that right now is the time to win hearts. Right now is the time to win customer loyalty. So she very publicly donates $2 million worth of baby formula to the Sichuan Relief Fund during the earthquake. How do you not fall in love with a company like that? They stepped up when Sichuan needed them. They're not even from that region. So with that, they conquered Sichuan. They conquered the first year.

So they move on to deer number two. Space milk. You conquer the nation. Population 1.4 billion people. Astronauts in China are the pride and joy of the nation. Chairwoman Tian knows this, so she lands a partnership with the NASA of China so that when astronauts go to space, it would be her powdered milk that they take with them.

Her brand would be synonymous with space milk. If it's good enough for the astronauts, who are the pride and joy of the nation, it's good enough for the average consumer. You're not the one going to space. You don't need all these nutrients. But if it's enough for the astronauts to be out there with no fresh vegetables, no fresh milk, and they're drinking this and they're staying healthy in space...

Through space, Chairwoman Tian won the nation, which leaves just one deer left. Deer number three, the 2008 Beijing Olympics, global domination, population 7.8 billion.

You win the Olympics, you win the world. I mean, not just in terms of gold medals, but if you land a sponsorship role at the Olympics, your brand is going to be seen by the entire world. But you could also take it a step further. You could also sponsor the event, but also supply all of the Olympians with your product.

Not just from your home country, not just the Chinese Olympians, but every other Olympian from every other country visiting to compete. You are as close to world domination as it gets. Chairwoman Tian secured a deal to be the supplier of milk for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. She would host marketing campaigns. The Beijing Olympics were going to be held on August 8th, 2008. 888.

I didn't even know that was the number 888. Yeah. It's the luckiest Chinese number. The luckiest day, she would argue. And if you gave birth on that date, she would give you free baby formula. Just one box. Really? Yeah, but people wanted to do it. An earthquake, space, the Olympics. That is how Chairman Tian would become the queen of the dairy industry in China and take over the world.

Wen Huatian was not always the queen of the cows.

That's what she was after the Olympics, but not really, okay? So before she was one of the most powerful female executives in the business world in all of China, she was just a vet on a small dairy farm. After graduating vet school, she gets a job at the Baijiao Happiness Dairy Cooperative, which at the time was basically like a mom and pop farm. I mean, you had maybe like two, three founders of the cooperative, and then you had 32 cows and 170 goats. You got more cows than you have employees.

Tian was in charge of taking care of all the cows and the goats. And as she's caring for the cows, she's listening in on the founders talking about their problems in the business. And she realizes that this whole dairy industry in China is clearly not doing well. And she's got the solution.

The current method that she's witnessing is milk farmer from a small rural region saves up money, buys a cow, then goes to source a healthy cow, purchases the cow, milks the cow, sells the milk to a big dairy company to do whatever they please with that milk, bottle it up, turn it into yogurt, milk candies, who cares, right? Technically, it makes the most sense.

One business is the supplier, the other business is buying. But the demand from big companies to purchase milk is high and the rural farmers' investment capital is low. Meaning even if the rural farmers have the space and the time to have 10 times more cows on their farm to supply 10 times more milk and 10x their revenue, they don't have the money to purchase 10 times more cows.

But the dairy companies do. I mean, all they got is money. So Tian decided she was going to raise capital. She was going to purchase cows for farmers and tell them to pay her in milk. The cows aren't free. The farmers will have to milk them and send them over and milk will be the payment.

So let's say per cow you ask for, I don't know, this is a completely arbitrary made up number because I don't know the market value of cows. But one cow, let's say, is 10 gallons of raw milk. Once the farmer gives the company 10 gallons of raw milk, that debt is paid and that cow is theirs, meaning any more milk after that will be paid by the dairy company.

That's really smart. Yeah, it's technically a win-win on both sides. Yeah. Because prior to this, dairy companies would spend millions, if not tens, hundreds of millions a year maintaining their own pastures and milking facilities and hiring their own employees to go to these dairy farms. Like they were in charge of admin, HR, everything. But now they're like, why don't we just buy a bunch of cows for the rural farmers and then just take their milk?

They get a ton of milk in return and farmers don't have to save up every single penny and go into debt trying to scale their farm and purchase more cows. Now, the small farmers, they also don't have the fear of going into competition against the big corporations. They feel like they're part of the big game. It's very low risk on both sides, or at least that was the initial thought.

So Tian ends up taking over the Happiness Dairy Cooperative and rebrands it and appoints herself as CEO. She is the one who will single-handedly push this company to become the nation's largest baby formula producer. She implements her cow loaning system. Instead of like a house mortgage, you get a cow mortgage that you pay off in milk.

She takes this company from being just a regular dairy farm to being on the Wall Street of China, Beijing Financial Street. Why sit there and milk cows when you can pay everybody else to do it and make billions?

By 2006, she's created a massive corporation with hundreds of employees, if not thousands. They had shareholders. They partnered with New Zealand's Fonterra Dairy Cooperative, which is the world's fourth largest dairy company. And they became known as the king of the cows in China.

Yeah, like this is a name that everyone knows. Like the ads on TV is like ingrained in your memory. Did you drink? I'm pretty sure I have. Like it's that big. It's like you go into Kroger and it's like on the shelf. You can't avoid them. They're that big. Wow.

They became, yeah, one of the most famous household brands in the nation to the point where their trademarked name became synonymous with baby formula. So some brands have so much power to their brand name that they can almost replace the actual word for the product that they sell. For example, band-aid. The word for the actual product they sell is a bandage.

Band-Aid is a company name. It's trademarked. Or Kleenex is a trademarked name. The word for the product is tissue. Or Chapstick, the word for the product is lip balm.

So Tian took this company from being 32 cows and over 100 goats to monopolizing the powdered milk industry. And by 2007, the company was doing $1.4 billion in revenue. And she renamed it to help with the rebrand. It went from being the Happiness Cooperative to San Liu, which translates to Three Deers. Three Deers. Conquering the Three Deers.

Was part of her big plan. That's so dark. When you hear three deers, you don't think of conquering three deers. Like hunting. Yeah, hunting. You think of like three running deers. Yeah, you think of like at the spring and they're drinking water. But no, she wants to conquer the three deers global domination. That's what she said. Like, I want to conquer three deers. That's what the name means.

That's crazy. Yeah. And it's just inevitable that a few cows and a few humans, I mean, they're going to get hurt along the way when you're conquering three deers. When you're going for global domination, sometimes a cow is going to get hurt.

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And the dairy industry in China at the time was a bit shady. And I think even in the US, even now, it's a bit shady. At this point in China, it was an unregulated time. The biggest problems that the dairy industry was facing were chemicals and additives being added to the milk to increase profits and fake milk being sold on the markets. Fake milk, not like oat milk, almond milk, milk replacements, fake milk.

There was a huge scandal with the baby formula company in China called Shein, not to be confused with the clothing company Shein. And they touted themselves as the superior baby formula brand that was entirely made overseas in the United States. They stated because all their products were imported and manufactured in the U.S., then exported into China, they're going to be a bit pricier than the other domestic brands. It's like when you get French clothing imported into the U.S.,

but the quality. I mean, that's something that you're going to feel. If not now, then you're going to feel it later when your kid gets into the top schools in China.

So after some investigation, it was exposed that Shein was never a U.S.-based company. They didn't have a facility in the U.S. or even an office. They never sold dairy products in the U.S. The company had zero affiliations to the United States of America. They were never registered with the FDA, which you absolutely must be in order to sell baby formula. The company address was some abandoned garage in the United States. It was never imported milk.

Everything that Xi'an sold was manufactured in China but marketed and lied as fake milk from the US. It was a complete and utter lie to charge Chinese consumers even more. The ones who could afford Xi'an bought Xi'an. The ones who couldn't afford Xi'an, they ate less, spent less so that they could buy Xi'an. Or they bought the next best thing, Sanlu, which was half the price. Do you know how baby formula is made?

They're made in these giant steel vats. They look like vans. Like, you know those aluminum vans? Okay, that's not what you call them. Like camper vans. Uh-huh.

Do you know what I'm talking about? Those huge vans, you go glamping in them. It looks like that. They're these giant, I don't want to call them bowls. They have tiny little holes at the top like a submarine and you stick mixers in. But the whole thing is just churning and mixing and it's this encased giant steel tube, steel vat. They look like vans. That's how large they are.

And raw materials like milk, water, filtered water, added nutrients, they all get mixed into this vat in liquid form to create a liquid blend.

And then it's typically heat treated to kill all harmful bacteria. Then it's cooled down, held in secure temperature cooled tanks. I mean, these tanks are huge. You could swim in them, which you should never do, but you could. Now, testing is typically done at this stage to make sure that the batch meets the specified nutrition levels. And once it passes, the liquid is heat treated once more. And then it's transferred into this giant drying machine where it's turned into powder.

So it's like, okay, that's interesting. I didn't know it was like kind of a dehydration process. And then you just add water and rehydrate it. Usually after it's dried, there's another testing process where the batch undergoes microbiological analysis. And it's just, it's not an easy process to make baby formula.

Sanlu used this method to feed millions of babies every day all over China. They handled the production of the baby formula, but they need to purchase all the raw ingredients through their suppliers. So they gave all these farmers all the cows and now they're like, hey, we need our milk, so bring us the milk. Think of them as like the chefs in the kitchen, but they still need to buy the supplies. Great. That's how it usually works everywhere. So where does it go wrong?

The suppliers start ripping off Sanlu. That's where it goes wrong. Some farmers realized, look at how much Sanlu is making in the market. They wanted a larger cut of that. For Sanlu, they're getting better profit margins. The farmers should get better profit margins too. Since without the raw milk, baby formula would be impossible for Sanlu to even create. So farmers, they start mixing in water with their milk to make it seem like there was more milk by the volume so that they could get paid more.

Sanlu catches on. They start measuring the milk by its protein content rather than its liquid volume to pay the farmers because water has no protein. A big part of baby formula is the protein level. Protein is critical for infant survival, growth and development. And milk is packed with protein.

Now the farmers thought if we water down the milk too much then the protein levels decrease then because there's no protein in water then Sanlu will just pay us for the real milk that we bring in. So that's pointless unless unless we find another loophole. The way Sanlu would test for protein in the milk would be to test for nitrogen levels in the milk. Nitrogen is a fundamental component of the building blocks of protein. So testing for that is cheaper and simpler than like I

I think it's most people just test for nitrogen everywhere across the board for most food companies. So in conclusion, if the milk has a high nitrogen content, Sanlu believes the milk has a high protein content and pays the farmers more for the milk. So all they have to do is then take the water down milk and the farmers are like, we got to inject something with nitrogen in it because that's what they're testing for to bring up the protein levels since the water brought it down, so to speak.

So what's something that's cheaper than milk that's got high nitrogen content? Some chemicals. Melamine.

Industrial chemical melamine. Not only is it super cheap, it's cheaper than milk and it's got incredibly high levels of nitrogen. Melamine is 66% nitrogen. So adding it to the milk products helps it give a false result of high protein. It's also odorless, dissolves into liquid very easily, and it's a white color. It looks like baby formula. It looks like cocaine.

Like whoever came up with that is... Is dead. Is dead? Well, sentenced to death. One of them. What a crazy, crazy, crazy... Let me just throw something in baby powders. Like...

How could somebody come up with that? To see it being injected into milk, I feel like most humans would have an aversion to it. To see chemicals go into food, like industrial chemicals. That would be like pouring Windex into a Gatorade. I feel like most humans would have a, whoa, like a very averse reaction.

Yeah, wow. So farmers, they start lacing their milk with melamine and then shipping it over to Sanlu instead of bringing in, let's say, five buckets of fresh, clean milk and getting paid for five buckets. They could now bring in 10 buckets of watered down milk. That's still five buckets of milk, but add five buckets of water, inject some nitrogen into it and get paid for 10 buckets when all they really had is five buckets of milk.

Now the question is, did the executives at Sanlu know this? I mean, I guess you could argue that for a while, perhaps not, maybe. You could argue that if you wanted, I guess because Sanlu themselves would argue that the Chinese government did not at the time require food to be tested for melamine, you could argue that they didn't know that Sanlu's baby formula products passed the regulations and the quality test.

One of the top executives bragged to the public nonstop, this is about a year before everything implodes, that they are the only company that has over 1,100 steps to check the quality of the baby formula. Their tagline was, 1,100 rounds of quality test, care for the baby's health, worthy of mother's trust.

The vice president would always say in interviews, the quality of our baby formula is what keeps babies alive. And it keeps Sanlu alive. It is our bloodline.

Wow. CCTV, which is China Central Television, the state-run news network, had a segment where they investigated this 1,100 steps claim. They sent reporters out to Sanlu's farms to see what was going on at the first link of the food chain. So obviously, if you go to HQ, you've got a bunch of corporate people in suits that are like, of course we have 1,100 steps. Look at our very real processing plant that's just here for aesthetics.

So they're like, we got to start at the first link of the food chain. We got to go to the farms and we got to check out these cows. See if they really do have good quality control.

Each person stepping into that milk facility, the cow farms, they had to stand in UV light for five minutes to get disinfected. Their cars were disinfected in the parking lot with UV lights. They went to go see the cows themselves and the cows looked happy. Each cow had a yellow tag on their ear and the Sanlo employee stated, oh yeah, I know everything about each cow's background. I know who their family members are, you know, because we're trying to keep cow incest at a minimum here.

Each employee of Sunlu on the farm had a health tag to ensure that nobody came to work sick. I mean, this seems like the type of company that you would want to buy baby formula from, right? So where does it all go wrong? How long does it take to take down a billion dollar company? 100 days.

Day one, Dr. Zhang is sitting in his office at the hospital. He's staring at his patient list and none of this is making sense. I mean, the past 10 days alone, he's treated countless kids with the same strange problem. Every new patient room he enters. First of all, he doesn't even work in the pediatrics department. So why are there so many children in the emergency room? It's looking like the PICU. It doesn't make sense.

Every time he entered a new patient room, it'd be the same thing. A mother holding a swollen baby about six to 11 months old. The baby's belly is rock hard and it looked as if the infant had swallowed a full-sized watermelon. The infant looked pregnant. Their heads were swelling. It's described as a slight ballooning of the foreheads. It looked just something wasn't right. The moms would cry out, please, you have to help me. He hasn't peed in 10 days and I don't know what to do.

In days? What do you mean he hasn't peed in days? Yeah, he hasn't peed in days. When was the last time they peed? Maybe a day or two ago? Maybe like five days ago, honestly, but there was red blood in the urine and that's why we rushed over.

Dr. Zhang tries not to show his panic, but this is very alarming. This is very deadly. If these babies are unable to pee, their bladder could rupture inside of their bodies. And that doesn't sound too dangerous to some people, but it's deadly. That's why they tell you to pee before you start driving, because if you get into a traumatic car accident with a full bladder and in that accident, your bladder ruptures, the urine leaks into your insides. That's all toxic waste. You're going to die very quickly of an infection.

But typically, when you are a baby, one of the biggest things is you just pee. You don't have the ability to hold your urine. So the fact that these children are unable to pee to the point that it's risking their lives to them almost dying. I mean, it was terrifying.

So Dr. Zhang is on high alert. One swollen baby, that's a strange case. Two swollen babies, he's getting concerned. By the fourth swollen baby that day, Dr. Zhang is starting to feel very unsettled. He's sitting there in his office, lunch untouched, in his 23 years of being a doctor. He had never seen so many children at risk of dying from kidney stones. That's what was causing this. Kidney stones. Have you ever seen one of those cold press juicers?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay. So not a blender that you just stick fruit and vegetables into and then you mix them up together and like a blade crushes them up. It's more of a mechanism that you put the vegetables through. It's like a hydraulic press and it's going to separate all the liquid out and the rest of the stuff. So you get the skin, the peel, the pulp all separated to one container and then the pure juice on the other side. That's how the kidneys work.

So your blood runs through the kidneys. They take out any particles, any toxins, and then they send it into the bladder to be peed out. And then now the clean blood circulates back into your body.

Ah, that makes sense. I see. Your kidneys are a cold press juicer. Like a little filter. Yes. Maybe the easier comparison would be that your body is a city and the kidneys are like the water filtration facility. It filters all the bad stuff out of the blood and then it sends it to the bladder, which is storaging the wastewater until it's peed out.

But sometimes the water treatment plant starts having difficulties filtering everything out because maybe there's too much calcium or minerals that are sticking together and then hardening and then not enough water. So you get these little clumps, stones as they call them. They get stuck in your urinary tract. And once you have one, it's like a snowball. More minerals are going to come rolling down and then start sticking to it. And it's just going to get bigger and bigger and bigger.

And kidney stones are very, very painful, right? Yes. Okay, so the word stone almost has this implication that it's like a smooth stone. They're more jagged crystals. So they can actually cut up the inside of your urinary tract as you're trying to pee it out.

That's the best case scenario is peeing it out. The worst case, well, the best best case scenario is that you don't get them. The second best case scenario is that you get small ones and then you pee it out. But it's still very, very painful. But once the stones are too large to be able to pass on without causing bleeding or kidney damage or won't, for whatever reason, pass through your urine, you have to get them removed.

It's not really something that you can stall. Because if you don't remove the kidney stones quickly, you're going to notice that you can't pee at all. It's blocking your urine stream. So you're going to want to pee. It's not that you suddenly lose the want, the yearning to pee. You're going to want to pee. It's just going to be painful. It's going to sting. Nothing's going to come out. You feel like you're going to explode because the kidney stones are blocking the flow of urine.

It's not only described as being such a unique type of pain that it's almost borderline sadistic, they say. It's also very dangerous to have kidney stones because if your kidney stones are blocking your flow of urine, your bladder could explode. So you have to get these kidney stones removed. Typically, there's three ways to do it. One, medications or shockwave therapy.

This is wild. Doctors can use shockwaves or like strong vibrations and sound waves to break down your kidney stones inside of your body. This is non-invasive typically. And they will break into smaller pieces and then pass through into your urine.

Or the second way is that the doctor will send cameras into your urethra. So like through your pee hole into the bladder and to the kidney stones. And once they locate it, they will usually have lasers attached to these small tubes and they'll laser the kidney stone to break it up. And then hopefully you'll pee it out. You have to be under general anesthesia for this type of process because I mean, obviously it's going up your urethra and it's going to take a few hours.

Or the third method, this is probably the most invasive. They have to cut a small hole into your back because that's where your kidneys are. They're closer to your back. And they will send a thin flexible tube to break into your kidney and break up and remove the stone.

It is the most invasive, but it is the most effective when it comes to removing a very large, stubborn kidney stone. And with this type of procedure, you typically cannot even go home the same day. You're going to have to be under general anesthesia for quite a bit of time. Now, I know one of the first things that I do when I hear about these types of medical situations, I'm like, oh, okay, I have it for sure, right? But no.

They say you will know if you have kidney stones. Like it's not something you're like, do I have kidney stones or not? You will know. People who have had kidney stones, they stated, it hurts more than giving birth. One woman on Reddit said, I'd rather give birth to a hundred more kids than have another singular kidney stone ever again in my life.

One person stated it's a unique type of pain. They stated they never even noticed. You don't even know where your kidneys are. You don't feel your kidneys. You never think about your kidneys. But then when you get a kidney stone, you will never forget where your kidneys are. They said it felt like someone was stabbing you in the kidney with a red hot knife and then twisting it around back and forth, back and forth. Someone even touching your back makes you want to throw up and gag.

Another person stated, "I couldn't move because of the pain. I thought it was gas, but then when I went to the toilet, I literally lunged forward on the toilet. I was in so much pain. I could not move. I could not stand up. I could not stop shaking from the pain. I was as white as a sheet. I started throwing up and sweating like I was running a marathon." They're trying to pass a kidney stone through their urine. Oh my goodness. "The pain was so severe I couldn't even make a noise. I just had silent tears running down my cheeks."

Another person just simply put it, I had two kidney stones. I've also been ejected from a moving vehicle going 75 miles per hour. I've been shot at before and I've experienced severe drug withdrawals. I would take any of the others again over any other kidney stone ever.

I'm not kidding. Your entire groin hurts like hell. And when it finally passes out in the urine, it will tear the lining of the urethra. The pain is a 9 out of 10 on the pain scale and you cannot escape it. It is absolutely relentless. Now, it is painful, but not the most fatal condition known to mankind, especially if you're an adult.

For children, though, kidney stones are incredibly dangerous, if not fatal. Without even touching on the enormous pain aspect that the kids are going to feel, surgically removing a kidney stone from a child is very difficult to do. Their body parts are incredibly tiny to navigate through, and it's not ideal to have younger children under general anesthesia for longer than three hours at a time. It can actually hurt brain development.

But if you don't remove these kidney stones, the kidney stones are blocking the urine and you could, at the very least, develop a lot of different conditions. You could have the kidneys become enlarged and swollen from the buildup of urine, which could ultimately lead to the loss of kidney function or death. And there's still that high risk of that bladder rupturing inside of the body. And even if these kids somehow survive all of that, there is a chance that their kidneys could still be so damaged that they will not be functional.

and they have to have kidney dialysis. If your kidneys don't work, do you know what you have to do? Add a filter or something? You have to go to the hospital three times a week, four hours at a time, and be hooked up to a machine where they circulate your blood. They take your blood out of your body, it runs it through the machine, and this machine acts like your kidney and cleans your blood, and then you have another needle sending that blood straight back into your body.

Wow. So it's very, very, very crucial. Yes. You have to do this three times a week, typically four hour sessions. And you have to do this until you can gain function of your kidneys again or get a kidney transplant. And if you can't do either of those things, you have to do this three times a week for the rest of your life or you will die.

So it's obviously a big deal and it's not a common thing to happen. So Dr. Zhang needs to know what the hell is going on right now. Why are all these kids getting kidney stones to the point that it could kill them? Usually children do not get kidney stones. Adults get them for poor diet and all these other unhealthy lifestyle choices that we're making. But when you're a child, it's very difficult, especially the types of kids that Dr. Zhang was seeing.

6 months old, 11 months old, they're not even toddlers that could eat like very salty foods and develop kidney stones. What could they possibly be eating?

It's not genetic. It's not environmental or at least not in a vague sense. So it's not just happening in one town. I mean, a lot of these families traveled to get to this hospital. It's got to be something else. So he's running through their routines over and over trying to find something similar. He sat the parents one by one down and he's in front of one of them right now. And he's like, OK, again, start from the top. List everything you do everywhere you go. What are you wearing? Who do you see? Everything. What laundry detergent do you use?

Dr. Zhang is starting to feel hopeless. I mean, this is another patient who has nothing in common with the other ones. And the mom is saying, well, every morning I go to work, so it's not easy for me, but I make sure. And Dr. Zhang is staring at the mom. What? She's leaning over the hospital bed, feeding her tiny little baby hooked up to all of these machines, a little baby bottle. Sorry, she needs to eat. She's looking frail and it's time. What baby formula do you use?

He thought of all the patient records. They all had something in common. Now that he thinks about it, they all drank. And the mom is like, oh yeah, I save up so that I can buy the best formula on the market. San Lu.

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If you commit libel and slander against a billion dollar company that has access to some of the most top attorneys in the nation, you could be looking at years of a lengthy court battle that's purposefully dragged out so that you lose everything you have to fund this losing fight. Because sometimes lawsuits are about who dries out first, who runs out of cash first. And if you're someone with a river flowing through your house with an endless stream of water and you're going up against someone who's got a tiny glass filled with a few sips, who's going to win the battle?

But losing everything to your name is not even the worst case scenario. In China, defamation can land you in prison for up to three years. And with Dr. Zhang's case, interestingly enough, he wasn't just risking being sued for libel by Sanlu, meaning Sanlu could sue him for spreading false news or lies about him just because he thinks all of his patients' parents feed them Sanlu. That's not enough.

Dr. Zhang could be sued for spreading false information that leads to a national food emergency. If he spreads a rumor that Sanlu is contaminated and is causing kids to have kidney stones and it turns out to be false but parents don't believe it because they're in full-on panic mode, there's a baby formula crisis, he could be held responsible for that.

Additionally, in China, government positions are the most coveted positions in the workforce. They're called iron bull jobs, meaning that your bowl that you eat out of is never going to break. You're always going to have a meal. It's an iron bowl. So working for a big company like Google or like Alibaba, for example, it's a prestigious job, but your bowl is not iron.

It might be the most fancy, high-quality crystal bowl that sparkles in the light when you eat near the window and people are looking at you very jealous. Like, wow, a crystal bowl, right?

But you could still get fired. There could still be layoffs the company could go under. There could be a number of reasons why you no longer work for them. But an iron bowl is an iron bowl. Yeah, it's job security. Yeah. Ultimate. Unless you break the law or something, right? Otherwise, your iron bowl is going to be filled with food.

Now in China, government positions are so coveted that when you're applying for a position, you not only have to have the highest qualifications possible, but you also have to have the perfect background. Not only can you not have a criminal history, but neither can your parents or even your partner. If Dr. Zhang were to be arrested for libel and for causing a national food crisis, his children would never even have a shot at the best positions in the country. They could not apply for government positions, no matter how hard they work.

Dr. Zhang is thinking about going up against a giant cow and he's just a tiny little ant that's gonna get stepped on So Dr. Zhang's wife is pleading with him like what do you mean? You're gonna tell people it's Sanlu and they need to be careful about Sanlu. I don't think so. You're not doing that You can't do that. You're gonna get in trouble. Do you not understand? You're gonna you're not gonna be a doctor anymore Dr. Zhang was quiet for a moment. I

He thought about all the patients that he had that day. I mean, some kids had walked days just to get to this hospital.

Walk days with their parents. They couldn't afford bus tickets. Their parents were desperate. They were migrant workers. They have nothing to their name. Every day they don't work. They're falling deeper into debt. They have no safety net to fall back on. They're willing to risk it all. Walk days to a bigger hospital to try and see a urologist, a specialist. And even if a specialist is willing to work on their child, they have no idea how they're going to afford it all.

These are the types of people he's seeing. His patients, the parents, they're like skin thin. Why? Because they're spending all their money on baby formula. And those are just the patients Dr. Zhang is seeing. What about the rest of the kids in the nation? He doesn't know what's going on anywhere else. Dr. Zhang just looks at his wife and said, if I lose my job, I'll just be a street vendor. Maybe I can stand in front of the hospital and spread some love to the people in need.

Maybe I can sell flowers for super cheap. Dr. Zhang reported it to the higher-ups in the hospital and eventually to the Center of Disease Control as well as the National Ministry of Health. Now, an article was released soon after about a contaminated baby formula that was on the shelves that was causing kids to turn to stone. They would call them stone babies because of the kidney stones that they were forming. A lot of experts felt like this was going to be worse than the 2004 Big Head Baby scandal.

So just to give you extra context from the beginning of this episode, the 2004 quote big head baby scandal took place in the city of Fuyang. Parents were feeding their children milk formula that had one to six percent of the essential vitamins, minerals and proteins for growing babies needs. The formula was later dubbed, quote, empty shell baby formula.

Oh, it only have one to 6% of intended nutrients. Yeah, which doesn't sound that bad, right? It's honestly... That sounds bad. It's horrendous. Let me tell you why, right? Because typically the first few months of a baby's life, about six months, the entire nutrition consumption is through either breast milk or baby formula. They don't even drink water.

Yeah, they don't even drink water until they're like, I don't know, nine months old because they don't want babies to get full off of water, which does not have the nutrients that they need to grow. And they will consume less breast milk or formula, which means they're going to risk not having enough nutrients. Look.

Large amounts of water can also affect the concentration of certain nutrients in the baby's blood, which can also be very dangerous if not fatal. And technically there is water in the baby formula and the milk, so it's not like they're not getting any water. But the idea that baby formula that was sold in that city would only contain 1-6% of the baby's nutritional needs is beyond alarming.

The lack of nutrition caused irreversible damage. The babies that were on that specific formula were just consuming cheap fillers like starch and sucrose with a dash of milk flavoring and like 1% of their daily needs. They were not growing the way that they were supposed to, and it resulted in a condition that enlarged the head. The heads of babies became swollen, and it started the quote, big head baby scandal.

The government investigated milk formulas that were being sold and found that 45 brands were making milk formula that did not meet standards of quality. 20 of them were straight up producing baby formula without a valid license, and three of them were dangerous knockoffs of existing brands. They were counterfeit baby formula being sold in stores, posing as real companies that do quality control when they do not.

229 babies were impacted and 12 babies died in the Fuyang city in 2004 from this situation.

Here's another one. Just four years later, and this article is basically stating, we think this one's going to be worse. Now, everyone wants to know what freaking formula is it? Like, how do we avoid it if we don't know? It felt like someone was gatekeeping this information. So this article comes out. They don't name the brand. Parents start freaking out. There were a lot of reports of parents just taking their babies off of baby formula and trying to feed them like egg tarts.

Every single baby formula company was being accused of being one of the ones that caused kidney stones. People were scanning through all these websites, company websites, looking at share prices, overanalyzing everything and anything that had to do with baby formula to see if they could figure out which company is it. And one of the bigger pieces of the puzzle, initially at least, was Wang's thread post.

about his daughter's urine being a strange color right so he even described the taste of the milk powder he's like no i had san lu like that's the one that i gave my daughter i remember and then he was getting ripped apart in the comments they were like why are you bringing a wonderful dairy company into this this is like the nation's treasure this is the nation's brand and you're just you're irresponsible you probably don't know what you're doing

So that's when that post being dug up again. Yes. And people are like, oh, maybe it's done. Maybe it's on Lou because this new article from mainstream media is getting a lot of press and attention and moms are going crazy. And everyone's like, which baby formula company is giving kids kidney stones? So they dig up this post again and it's described. He described the milk powder as being weird. It kind of smelled aromatic like milk.

But it wasn't. It was weird. It tasted very smooth, but you could feel the powder residues in your mouth. So you would see it and there's no clumps of powder. It's not like you needed to mix it better, but it's almost like you could feel it swirling, the tiny little particles.

That's what he's saying about Sanlu. And he thought, well, that can't be Sanlu. Sanlu is the nation's brand of baby formula. They have 1100 steps for QA. It's got to be a different issue. He read a few articles about counterfeit milk. So he thought this is a situation of counterfeit milk. He reaches out to Sanlu, asks, do you have a counterfeit issue? They go back and forth and then it's agreed that Wang would send them opened bags of Sanlu that he bought that he felt were bad.

The company receives his package and then they ghost him. So he keeps reaching out to get an update on this case. And the company, Sanlu, just tells him, yeah, those samples are authentic products, not fakes. So Wang is like, okay, that's even more alarming. If it were fakes, I'd be like, okay, that makes sense. But if they're authentic, then what's wrong with the product? So he emailed them back. Well, then are there quality issues with the product? Can I see some sort of lab report? Because you must have run a lab in order to identify that this is an authentic product. Hmm.

No, no, nothing's wrong. A regional distributor will be in contact with you for more information. Wong's like, okay, that's really weird. Why do I need to talk to a regional distributor? Well, they talk to him and they're like, hey, so here's what we're going to do, okay? So you bought how many bags? Doesn't matter. Every unopened bag that you bring us, I'm going to give you a new bag, okay? It's going to be an exchange. Now, every opened bag that you give us, I'm going to give you two new bags, okay?

What? Yeah. Wang is like, what? Why would I do? Like, this whole thing is weird. So he reaches back out to the company, the guy that he was originally talking to. And he's like, why can't I just know the results of this test? I don't want to talk to this regional guy. I don't know what he's talking about. Just tell me. I just want to know what the sample showed because my child ate that milk powder, had abnormalities in her urine, and I just feel like I can't live in peace. What about the other kids who are drinking the same milk powder? Do they have weird urine? No.

So Wong stated that the company rep just told him the lab results reveal trade secrets so we can't tell you. Just willy-nilly, you know? And the milk powder packaging says it's intended for kids ages 3 to 7. You stated that your daughter is 13. So I'm just saying. What? Yeah. What are you saying? Like 13-year-old can't drink it? Basically...

So Wang was confused. He left off the internet post by saying that he's going to spend, he might even mortgage his house to test this Sanlu powder by himself. But mysteriously, just 10 days after he posted that, he would ask the website moderators to take it back down. He stated that the milk powder was a counterfeit, which nobody believed because in his original post, he talked about how Sanlu told him it's an authentic piece.

It was later discovered that Wong was given four boxes of baby formula, about $350 in exchange for his post being taken down and him signing on the dotted line that he would no longer talk about this incident in exchange for four boxes of baby formula. He would also have to forfeit all the products in question to Sanlu, all of his unopened Sanlu products.

Wang signed on the dotted line, took the $350 worth of baby formula, asked to take down his post, and handed over 13 bags of milk formula. But he had 15 bags. Two were hidden in his closet for safekeeping.

September 11th, 2008, an article was published finally naming Sanlu as the culprit. Within hours, Sanlu formally releases a product recall statement saying that the company's own inspection found batches of Sanlu baby formula to be contaminated with melamine. Day 100, the cow empire comes crumbling down.

The top executives from Sanlu and some of the bigger dairy suppliers for Sanlu were arrested. Chairwoman Tian blamed the greedy cow farmers for all of this, that all the dairy cow farmers supplied the milk to Sanlu were illegally adding melamine to the fresh milk to make more money, and they're greedy, they're disgusting, and obviously we didn't know until it's too late. Technically, the government does not require that we test for melamine. It's unfortunate, but we don't just test for random chemicals across the board unless it's required of us.

They wish they could have done better. That's the whole thing. Sandu's like, we wish, right? But we did everything that we're supposed to do. We do what the competitors do. We wish we could have done more, but you know.

But that's not entirely the truth, is it? During the trial, an Olympic-sized cover-up was exposed. The company executives were made aware of a baby with kidney issues after drinking the baby formula back in 2007, 10 months before all of this goes down. The vice president of the company just waved it off as an individual case. A problem with the baby has no correlation with Sanlu. That's what he told them.

Soon after, chairwoman Tian is made aware of complaints from all over China about kidney issues and the baby formula. She sets up a quality investigation team, May 2008. They're screening for things that could possibly cause urine crystals and kidney stones. And up until this point, they do not test for melamine. And up until this point, I do think that chairwoman Tian is like trying to do the right thing to a degree.

Or she's just doing the normal thing, like the bare minimum, which is investigating a claim, right? She's doing more than the VP, I guess, is what I was trying to say. June 2008, the results come back that a non-protein nitrogen was found in the baby powder. It contained six times more non-protein nitrogen than similar baby formula brands. But nobody could tell the executives what that non-protein nitrogen was. Everyone was still, quote, in the dark.

July 2008, someone on the investigation team suspected melamine and they started testing for that. They sent out 16 batches to be tested by the local government's entry and exit inspection and quarantine bureau. 15 of the 16 batches came back with large amounts of melamine present. Even the testing center was so concerned about how high the levels were that they called Sam Liu and they were like, hey, what were those samples from? Because I wouldn't even feed that to livestock.

And I know you're like a baby formula company. So what's going on? Sanlu stated, oh, no, that's just like a, we're experimenting with different formulas. That was like a product and development. It's not made to the public. And we're testing raw materials because we were receiving not great raw materials. So we're testing these farmers now. We're trying to crack down on quality.

The center believed Sanlu and did not raise any alarms. The same day that the results came back, Chairman Tian held an emergency board meeting that lasted from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. And for seven hours, they came up with a game plan. PR. They reached out and made a PR proposal to Baidu. Do you know Baidu?

Yeah, the Google of China. Exactly. Sanlu already spends a lot of money on Baidu for ads. So they've got, I'm sure, a very strong partnership with Baidu. They come up with a PR proposal where they want Baidu to bury any negative websites or search hits for Sanlu. They also want Baidu to source negative hits for Sanlu competitors and algorithmically place them at the top. Yep. Wow.

Baidu rejected and Sanlu kept going. So this is all happening like six days before the Olympics began. Their secret meeting was August 1st. The Olympics, well, the official game start August 8th.

Yeah. Wait, Baidu rejected? Yeah, Baidu rejected. So this didn't happen with Baidu? No. Baidu rejected. Now, the government officials would not reject. So before the Olympics, Sanlu reaches out to all the government officials and is like, hey, you need to help us because the Olympics are coming. We're not just a random Chinese brand. Do we need to remind you? We are the milk of the Olympians. We're space milk. We're astronaut milk. Okay? So do you want China to be an embarrassment? No.

To the whole world? The 2008 Beijing Olympics was actually one of the most intense Olympics ever hosted. China felt like they were being dragged through the mud by Western media outlets and every bad thing about their country, which every country has bad things, were being blown up, amplified, and they were being ripped to shreds in Western media. So the government is essentially trying to do...

This is like their marketing. This is like their PR. This is their time to show the world we're not like that. The Chinese people are great, right? So a lot of Chinese civilians were really excited about this. It's like time to be like, hey guys, like please just give us a chance. The Chinese people, they have as much control over their government as we do, likely less. So this is a chance for them to just be represented in a positive light and show the whole world what their nation is really about. And there is a lot on the line.

2008 was a rough year economically for everyone. Then the Sichuan earthquake that killed over 87,000 people occurred. That was another international embarrassment. So this, if they have a milk scandal right now during the Olympics, it wasn't going to be good. So the government agreed to hush-hush it until after the Olympics. It wasn't until two weeks after the end of the Olympics that the first major newspaper reported Sanlu as the brand with the melamine in the formula.

And that brand was poisoning babies. Now, side note, remember the VP that jumped out of his window in the beginning of this case? Well, thankfully he survived. Not that I think that he had any intention of not surviving. His apartment was on the fourth floor. He landed on a car and his injuries consisted of a fractured ankle. That's it. Just a fractured ankle. But for some reason, he still showed up to court on a full stretcher. Yeah.

900 tons? Yeah. Wow.

So the cows came crumbling down.

Unfortunately, Sanlu is not a one-off situation. After they were exposed for lacing their baby formula with melamine, the Chinese government started investigating. They found melamine in liquid milk, yogurt, white rabbit milk candies, frozen desserts, cereal products, pastries, cakes, biscuits, protein powders, processed foods. The government randomly tested 69 batches of baby formula like different brands and 22 were found to contain high traces of melamine.

I mean, it was so bad that a lot of countries banned dairy products made in China from entering their country. Over 22 companies were forced to set up a victim's compensation fund. Collectively, it had $127 million, but...

I mean, it wasn't great. Level one was if you lost your child completely and you would receive $28,000, which is nothing. Level two is if your child had severe kidney issues that required dialysis or surgery, you would get a wild $4,288. And level three is if you had to be hospitalized, but it did not have invasive surgery, just utter pain, $282.

But the worst part is the minute that you take even a dollar from the compensation fund, you are forced in return to sign a document that states that you will never sue the company or ever ask for another dollar in compensation ever again. It's a one time shut up deal.

And even then, it was so hard to get money. Like parents weren't even asking for a lot. They just wanted their medical costs covered by the government or by these companies, whoever. And no one would give them the money. Doctors would say, well, it's really hard to say 100% that your problems were caused by the melamine poisoning when you were a baby. So the government is like, well, if you can't prove it 100%, then you don't get money.

It was ridiculous. More than 100 attorneys stepped forward to volunteer to represent families in claims against Sanlu. One parent who lost their child stated, even if they offer me compensation, I'm not going to accept it. What do I need the money for if my son is gone? These people were making a profit off of letting all of us die. Selling this baby formula.

The worst slap in the face was that their son wasn't even included in the official death toll for this case. A lot of parents point to the theory that the official death toll for the infants that passed by drinking melamine lace formula is inaccurate because the official death toll given by the government is six. Six babies. Yeah, six babies. And there's a lot of parents who are like, no, my child died from that and we're not part of the official death toll.

So a lot of parents think it's really suspicious that many of the children died but were not included. There's speculation that the official death toll was kept down so that chairwoman Tian, who is incredibly influential and well-connected and has a lot of ties to the government, would get life in prison rather than the death penalty. Many of the victim's parents stated she should be shot. One parent said, even if she dies a hundred times over, it won't lessen our hate.

And there was a massive ripple effect to all of this. Illegal businesses were being set up where baby formula was being imported in these mysterious giant shipping containers. They were imported through Vietnam and distributed through China because there was a sudden demand from Chinese civilians to purchase foreign baby formula. Even to this day, I believe studies show that there is not a strong sentiment that is favorable for domestic baby formula brands.

Yeah, because people just don't trust it anymore. Like even today, nobody... Yeah, you don't want to buy like baby powder made in China. And it became a global problem because now all of a sudden, all Chinese moms and dads are like, well, we got to...

we got to get some foreign baby formula. But the problem is all of these companies that are in foreign countries, they only make a certain amount. Like they don't expect emergencies like this to happen. So for example, if one of the biggest distributors in the US, Abbott, wanted to suddenly supply that demand, they might send America into a baby formula shortage.

So countries started banning the exporting of baby formula into China. They didn't necessarily state that it's because of what's going on in China, but like people were putting two and two together. The U.S. randomly made a ban. Five to ten cans per person per day in the store. That's all you can buy.

Australia, four cans. UK, two cans. Macau, two. Hong Kong, two. And because of that, Sanlu will just be a stain on the industry forever. One netizen stated, it only takes one mouse poop to ruin the whole pot of porridge. Over 2,000 tons of baby formula were seized from the Sanlu warehouse, which is about six Boeing 747 planes worth of baby formula that were all contaminated with melamine.

Yeah, that's how much baby formula that they took from the warehouse. They recalled about 9,000 tons of baby formula and one city decided to go ahead and just dump five tons of Sanlu baby formula to get rid of it into the sewers, which I don't know if that's like the best choice, but it took 30 minutes to dump it all. And that is how one of the biggest dairy companies in all of China, the queen of the cows, came crumbling down. What are your thoughts?

Do you really know what's in your food? Please be safe and I will see you guys on Sunday for the next episode.