Questioning the Standard
By HU YUE
【期刊名称】北京周报（英文版） 【年(卷),期】2011(054)050 【总页数】2
Dairy quality standards trigger further controversy hina’s dairy industry is once again being scrutinized as suspicions abound that major dairy enterprises played a hand in manipulating and C lowering quality standards to save costs.
The new standards released in March 2010 set the maximum safety limit for bacteria in raw milk at 2 million cells per milliliter, four times greater than the amount allowed under previous regulations. In addition, the minimum standard for protein content was reduced from 2.95 grams to 2.8g per 100g.
Since then, critics have lambasted the decreased standards as further tainting an industry that has been mired in controversy since the melamine scandal in 2008.
“China is lagging far behind Western countries in dairy safety, and the gap may continue widening because of the low standards,” said Lu Jiaping, Director of the Institute of Agro-food Science and Technology under the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, in an interview with the 21st Century Business Herald.
Questioning the Standard
