Chinese Milk Scandal

Most of you don’t know this, but early on in my career I was a milk man. Yes, I graduated from Purdue University with a BS degree in Food Science. My first job was working for Dean Foods Company as a supervisor in dairy plant – a milk man. (Here is my microbiology professor – Dr. Maribeth Cousin)

This may sound strange to you, but there is something special about a dairy plant. Milk is a fragile, important, ubiquitous and sensitive food. Taking special care of milk is what we did every day in that plant.

We took special care because we understood that everyone, but especially children depend on milk and if we didn’t do our jobs right, people could get sick. In fact there was a sad incident here in Chicago where there was a salmonella outbreak traced back to a Jewel dairy plant was wasn’t getting cleaned properly. Thousands were sickened and several died. The plant never re-opened.

So this milk scandal from China where they were putting poisonous industrial chemicals (melamine) in milk makes me sad and mad. What kind of person does this? How do they rationalize it to themselves? How do they sleep at night?

I have a pretty libertarian bent, but the USDA here in the USA and most if not all of the food manufacturers do a really good job of ensuring that we have the safest food supply in the world.

TO’B