New Zealand dairy giant issues global botulism alert: Thailand at risk

[CHANGOVER]

It's OK the large stores taking them off the shelves but the small shopkeepers will keep them until sold.

[Gulfsailor]

Either NZ authorities have their dates wrong, or the Thais...

From the original article: 'Three batches of whey protein concentrate manufactured in May last year recently tested positive for Clostridium botulinum.'

Thai response: 'In light of Fonterra's move to recall its product, Deputy Secretary General of Food and Drugs Administration (FDA), Srinuan Kodchakorn said the FDA has instructed the local importers of the New Zealand's products to quickly pull the goods bought during May 2013 off the shelves.'

[drdoom6996]

the most important part is MISSING, WHICH BRANDS of infant formula and sportsdrinks !!!

or we must be glad that it gets reported at all

Stay away from anything imported from NZ until then, is what I'm going to do.

I just checked all my products and I am not using anything from NZ, just Denmark and America. I didn't even know Sargento was an American product.

[h90]

It's surprising that the contaminated batches actually got through Fonterra's QC system. NZ food safety standards are amongst the highest in the world and Fonterra's own internal regulations for collection and processing of raw milk are so stringent it's OTT. Even their requirements for 3rd party storage companies is verging on the ridiculous.

I sincerely hope that the contaminated product is satisfactorily traced and end products are withdrawn before anybody suffers illness or worse.

However - Fonterra is an overly powerful co-operative and also too big for their boots in the dairy servicing industry in NZ. I've got no real sympathy for Fonterra and this will bring a wry smile to many of those that are service providers to them.

I worked in a company with excellent internal regulations in a country with very high standards.

But still that doesn't prevent someone to just ignore every regulation all the time.

often it needs just 1 idiot.

........

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

The CEO of Fonterra was quoted in one of the earlier news reports in this thread as saying the following:

Dairy products such as fresh milk, yoghurt, cheese, spreads and UHT milk products are not affected," said Spierings in a statement.

That list, of course, leaves out things like the Dumex infant formulas that are being recalled by the Thais.

[Roadman]

Cheese products are not affected and IMO the whole thing has been blown out of proportion, and the potentially contaminated milk powder batches have been traced. So let's get things into perspective:-

A scientist has said that botulism is dangerous and there have been 2 deaths in 35 years in NZ.........startling isn't it!!

The melamine additive used to bolster milk in China was added by the Chinese without the knowledge of Fonterra, and the Dicyandiamide (also known as DCD) found in exported New Zealand milk was well below international safety standards as it is fairly commonly used in dairy farms, so a big scare about nothing

"Fonterra told Nutricia on Friday night that some of the whey protein they used in their infant formula might be contaminated with a botulism causing bacterium caused by a dirty pipe at the company's Hautapu plant.

Ms Tap said they narrowed the potential contamination to five batches of the formula which were all still in Nutricia's supply chain and not on the shelves.

There have not been any confirmed reports of illness from the infant formula".

Face it, if you live in Thailand you can be eating food contaminated by gecko, mice and rat droppings, indiscriminate used of pesticides, generally unhygienic conditions, washed and prepared in contaminated water, prepared by folk who rarely wash their hands.......and the list goes on!

The NZ dairy industry has the highest health and safety standards in the world, and it just shows that even then some small thing can slip through. At least they have owned up and recalled the suspect batches knowing full well that there would be "fallout", but better than just letting it go into the system.

I would much prefer a company like this to be my supplier.

Nail...head...hammer...well put together and well said.

They have responded as you would hope a quality transparent company would have. They could have kept it all hush, hush and the whole thing would have probably passed without anyone probably getting ill. But there was the minute risk so they manned up and owned the issue and are removing that minute risk that someone could get ill at the risk of cost of markets and huge dollars. Well done Fonterra.

[phuketsub]

That line jumped out at me as well; I wonder if it was an intentional double-entendre....

'Things are liquid' - Yup, that's a symptom.

[JulesMad]

"Over the last 24 hours, things have been very fluid," he said.

Brilliant Quote

[Cuban]

"Over the last 24 hours, things have been very fluid," he said.

Brilliant Quote

Were they referring to diarrhoea?

[Krataiboy]

Well, they will be if you eat crap like this.

[living in Patts]

My girlfriend is 6 months pregnant and was using Fromterra products.... Now massively reduced in local Big C (north Pattaya) but not removed from shelves. Disgusting

[xylophone]

My girlfriend is 6 months pregnant and was using Fromterra products.... Now massively reduced in local Big C (north Pattaya) but not removed from shelves. Disgusting

What products are safe?

* All infant formula products EXCEPT Karicare Stage 1 and Karicare Stage 2 and Dumex (overseas).

* Fresh dairy products such as milk, cheese and yoghurt.

* Frozen products such as ice cream.

* Milk powder.

So unless your girlfriend is eating infant formula product, she should be okay eating any of the other products.

[xylophone]

My girlfriend is 6 months pregnant and was using Fromterra products.... Now massively reduced in local Big C (north Pattaya) but not removed from shelves. Disgusting

This from the CEO of Fonterra on 28/08/2013:

"Fonterra chief executive Theo Spierings defended the company's multimillion-dollar recall of dairy product thought to contain a botulism-causing bacteria, despite it proving to be a false alarm.

The Ministry for Primary Industries said it had received results confirming that the bacteria found in the whey protein concentrate (WPC) manufactured by Fonterra was not the botulism-causing clostridium botulinum.

As it turned out, the organism was confirmed as clostridium sporogenes, which is not capable of producing botulism causing toxins, the ministry said.

Spierings said the cooperative had done the right thing and with the recall and that it would do the same again, if confronted by similar circumstances".

So no problems with girlfriends or babies consuming Fonterra products.

[sunshine51]

2 links on the Kiwi botilism scare. Now proved to be a false alarm...FYI.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23860452

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/28/us-newzealand-milk-contamination-idUSBRE97R04E20130828

[xylophone]

2 links on the Kiwi botilism scare. Now proved to be a false alarm...FYI.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23860452

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/28/us-newzealand-milk-contamination-idUSBRE97R04E20130828

So this NZ company put customers first and ordered a recall even though it wasn't really sure if there was a problem. Better to be safe than sorry, and to do what they did knowing that they would lose money, damage their brand and suffer with image problems is a rare thing in this day and age...............if only the "bankers" in the USA had done the same in 2007.