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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TobagoJack who wrote (44920)	1/7/2009 5:26:21 PM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 217561

let check the local news here

To: TobagoJack who wrote (44920)	1/7/2009 5:38:34 PM
From: elmatador	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217561

Only Stratfor. Nothing in Bloomberg. Nothing in Estado newspaper.

To: TobagoJack who wrote (44920)	1/7/2009 6:06:49 PM
From: Maurice Winn	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217561

TJ, I think it is worse than a scandal [the Sanlu milk poisoning]. I consider it a criminal enterprise. Fonterra, the NZ government-enacted dairy monopoly owned by farmer shareholders was criminally negligent in my opinion. In my days running New Zealand fuel specifications, I was more particular about the fuel quality than Fonterra seems to have been about milk which is intended for babies to swallow. For example, there was no benzene limit in 1984 on petrol in NZ. I established a limit made up out of thin air, but at least it put an upper bound on how bad the refiners could be. Benzene causes myeloid leukaemia. Zero was too low for the value of the benzene in fuel quality and 20% too high for the risk. It turns out I got it about right at 5% mass. The other technical managers went along that we should introduce that control. I also wanted tighter volatility controls to reduce the number of people cooked to death in vehicle fires but didn't have the job long enough to get that done [some investigation was needed to see what was optimal - zero volatility being not an option while still selling petrol]. I was also pushing for dramatically reduced lead and for the government to require lead banning. Lead in petrol [and elsewhere] is brain poison and was one of the great blunders of the 20th century. With only a casual acquaintance with China's culture Fonterra should have known that somebody would do anything to get some money. If they can make a white, semi-soluble powder out of chalk, melamine, and sheep fat which looks sort of like milk, Fonterra should have expected that and required controls to avoid it. Fonterra had a 40% shareholding which was enough to require testing standards to preclude criminal acts of contamination. If they couldn't get what they wanted, they should have sold their shareholding and called it quits. Continued reporting shows Fonterra to have been clueless in their handling of the situation from when they first thought of buying a shareholding. But it's not really endorsement <the milk scandal has large new zealand endorsement > = though I grant you that having a brand associated is tacit endorsement, likely to be mistaken for such by consumers. I buy expensive Nestle infant milk-based food because I assume Nestle have some interest in protecting their hugely profitable brand - possibly wrongly because it is amazing how useless managers of brands can be [as shown the Fonterra fools] nestle.co.nz Mqurice