Pinoy Kasi
Milked
By Michael Tan
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 01:58:00 10/03/2008
MANILA, Philippines—The controversy over contaminated Chinese milk offers us lessons about globalization, food production and nutrition. Besides explaining what those lessons are, I thought I’d go on the light side and talk about how the Chinese crisis has spurred a new twist to an old tradition known in China as “nai ma,” or wet nursing.
Let’s talk about globalization first. The joke is that God created the world in six days, then rested and left the rest of creation to China. Hyperbole aside, in this age of globalization, with China as a main manufacturer of nearly everything imaginable, any lapse in their quality assurance will often have global repercussions.
We saw that tsunami effect last year with food products and toys. The latest scandals involving melamine in milk are more worrisome because we are dealing with another aspect of globalization, which is how a product may be manufactured with materials from different parts of the world. We see the brand name Cadbury and think it must be made in England but it turns out some of its products are now made in China, which is why it ordered a recall of its chocolate bars made in China as a precautionary measure.
Trick or treat
Cadbury was being responsible. What assurance do we have that other chocolate products do not contain contaminated milk? Hong Kong authorities have already banned Lotte cheesecake made in China. Lotte is a Japanese brand.
Cadbury’s recall also reminds us to be more conscious about how we look at food. The public is focused on contaminated milk but our vigilance comes down when we think of candies, which we don’t usually associate with milk. But chocolate bars almost always have milk. Then, too, there are the popular White Rabbit candies, also from China, with the wrappers actually saying, in Chinese characters, that it is milk candy.
With Halloween coming up, many schools and communities will be organizing Trick or Treat activities, and distributing candies. I’d urge a rethinking of these activities, which could turn out to be Tricked (by food companies) and Treated (at the hospital) nightmares.
A quick aside here: Even without the Chinese milk scandal, even without Halloween, we should be phasing out this idea of giving candies to children as treats. The sugar in candies can make children so terribly hyper, ruin their appetites, destroy their teeth, and distort their notions of good food.
98-percent dependency
I’m going to move on to another matter, and this is our dependency on milk imports. When I was a veterinary student in the 1970s, several of our professors kept reminding us one of the roles of veterinarians was to break our strangling dependency on imports for milk and dairy products.
I thought, through the years, that we had reduced that dependency, so when the Chinese scandals broke out, I promptly shifted to two “fresh milk” products, thinking they were locally produced.
Alas, I learned only recently from a television news report that we are still 98 (or is it 99?) percent dependent on milk imports, with the National Dairy Authority reporting the entire country only has 29,000 dairy cattle.
A report by Salvacion Bulatao of the National Dairy Authority notes that in 2002, we imported 215 million kilograms of milk and milk products at a cost of P17.3 billion. About 70 percent of those imports consists of milk powder. That shouldn’t be surprising with two million babies born each year, most of whom are put on infant formulas soon after birth. Importation means higher costs to consumers. Listen to the poor when they complain about the costs of child-rearing and it’s usually expressed as “Mahal ang gatas” [“Milk is expensive”].
Fortunately, adult Filipinos aren’t that fond of milk. Genetically, many Asians, Filipinos included, lack an enzyme called lactase which is needed to digest non-human milk so we tend to get gas pains, or rush to the toilet, after drinking cow’s milk.
But if Filipino adults don’t drink milk as a beverage, we still use it to mix with our coffee, chocolate, oatmeal and all kinds of dessert products. The only consolation we have is that a toxicologist recently interviewed on Tina Monzon Palma’s TV talk show “Talkback” said that it’s infants who seem to be mainly susceptible to melamine’s effects.
If you’re really paranoid about the safety of cow’s milk, I’d suggest shifting to soya milk or finding a local dairy source, including milk from cows, carabaos or goats. Make sure you get them pasteurized. Some of the alternatives to cow’s milk need some getting used to, because of the difference in smell, but it can work out.
Wet nurses
I’ve received several emails from advocates of breastfeeding who point out that while we’re all running scared over China’s contaminated milk, we seem much too complacent with milk formulas, which have their share of problems even when they are approved for public use. Milk powder, even from so-called reputable non-Chinese companies, can be contaminated in the production process by bacteria. It can also be contaminated in homes, when parents and caregivers are careless about storage and mixing the milk powders — with dirty water, for example.
Breastfeeding is still best for children, nutritionally and hygienically. Breastfeeding can be extended not just months but even to the toddler years. Mothers explain they have to stop breastfeeding when they go back to work, but there is the milk banking option: expressing the milk and then storing this in the refrigerator and instructing family members or caregivers to give this milk to the baby.
In the past, many societies had the practice of hiring wet nurses. They tended to be poorer women who also just had a baby and were lactating. The poor women would be hired to put rich children to their breasts, while their own babies were given rice porridge.
In many societies, too, women are willing to share their breast for free, for the child of a relative, neighbor or friend. Back in the 1970s, in a village in the northern province of Kalinga, I met a woman who went around carrying two children and breastfeeding them. One was her child, the other her grandchild.
So widespread is the practice that Sharia or Islamic law even provides that children who breast-feed from the same woman are considered similar to siblings, and cannot marry.
The Chinese milk scandal has renewed interest in wet nursing. My father clipped out an article for me from one of the Chinese papers describing this revival in Chinese cities, with families paying from 1,000 to 8,000 renminbi (from P6,800 to P54,400) a month for a “nai ma,” free board and lodging thrown in. The Taiwanese are not about to be left behind, offering the equivalent of P1,800 a day.
Who knows, we just might see the Chinese recruiting Filipinos to be wet nurses. Mind you, it’s as dignified a job as any, but it’d be painful if that happened because we’d be seeing the poor Filipino, already figuratively milked by unscrupulous businesses in China and in the West, ending up milked, literally, to make a living.
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Email: mtan@inquirer.com.ph
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