QUALITY TEST? Inspectors test dairy products at Yili Industrial Group on September 29. Yili Industrial Group and Mengniu Dairy are taking active measures to guarantee milk safety

This September, milk tainted with the industrial chemical melamine was found to have made thousands of children in China sick. The scandal seriously eroded consumer confidence in dairy producers. Recently, Yili Industrial Group Co. Ltd. and China Mengniu Dairy Co., two dairy giants in China, integrated cow feeding into their production chains.

Previously, milk cows were normally fed by farmers, many of whom were not equipped with advanced cow feeding and milking technology, resulting in low efficiency in milk production. Milk supplies have struggled to keep up with soaring market demand.

Farmers sell their milk to milk-collecting stations or to dairy companies. Some private run milk-collecting stations, greedy for profits, diluted milk with water and then blended in melamine to inflate the protein content so that the milk could pass tests administered by milk-processing factories.

Factories had little control over the milk suppliers. By taking over cow feeding, the companies will be able to monitor the milk production process from the very beginning. Zhang Jianqiu, CEO of Yili Industrial Group, said he regretted that milk companies did not check for melamine earlier and added that in September his company took over all the milk-collecting stations supplying milk to them.

New model

After the tainted milk scandal, both Yili Industrial Group and Mengniu Dairy speeded up the construction of their own milk supplying bases. Their new milk supply model is "milk association." Pan Gang, President of Yili Industrial Group, explained that his group has gathered cows fed by farmers into a milk association. The cows are fed and milked together and quarantined and sanitized regularly. Yili Industrial Group is working with China Agricultural University in operating the association, with the company providing the infrastructure for cow feeding while the university provides technical support.