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Time to buy shares in soy milk companiesPosted by Jeremy Goldkorn on Saturday, September 20, 2008 at 8:16 AM
 Notice inside Starbucks store recommending soy milk After Chinese government tests revealed that there was melamine not just in Sanlu brand baby formula but also liquid milk produced by China's biggest dairy brands such as Yili, Mengniu and Bright, many stores have pulled all domestically produced milk from their shelves. Starbucks, whose stores in China used Mengniu milk, has stopped serving dairy products entirely, offering customers only soy milk. Inside the stores, there a little notices "recommending" soy milk cappuccino (see photo at left taken in a Beijing Starbucks), but they are currently not offering any kind of real milk. The scandal is a massive setback to China's relatively new dairy industry, and to the foreign companies invested in it, such as New Zealand's Fonterra which owns 43% of San Lu. The knock on effects of the scandal will probably impact the bottom lines of companies like Nestlé that sell a lot of dairy-based products. But there are likely to be some winners at the end of this scandal: - The nationalist sentiment that was building against Coca-Cola's proposed acquisition of Huiyuan — China's biggest fruit juice company — has dissipated as online discussion shifts from worries about foreigners taking domestic brands to worries that domestic brands can't be trusted. - Breast pumps and other breast feeding accessories may enjoy renewed popularity after several decades of Chinese mothers turning away from breast feeding in favor of powdered formula. - Soy milk is going to enjoy a revival. Chinese people have been drinking soy milk for thousand of years; it still popular and is a good replacement for cow's milk. Below is a list of China's top ten soy milks brands, according to Chinese brand ranking site Maigoo.cn: 维维 VV Group (also make dairy milk powder) Note: There is nothing to stop providers of soy milk or soy proteins from adding melamine to these products, but as long as there isn't a melamine soy milk scandal in the next few months, dairy milk will be the product that consumers view with suspicion. Links and Sources
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Comments on Time to buy shares in soy milk companies
I usually have some homemade soy milk, but I've also been drinking the Vitasoy for a while. I hope I can trust a HK company for that.
Any idea how much the milk scare cost Starbucks in wasted milk?
Yeah, spill the milk! Before we all get sick. Soya milk will have to do. Clearly, as usual, there will be winners and losers in all this.
The losers, dairy shares, high priced soya and contaminated milk for the masses. The winners, soya shares, and other agricultural (non-dairy) stocks, (if there is no contamination, corruption and deregulation of GM soya manufacturing.
Well done Starbucks, show concern for your customers when it means that loyalty maintains a viable business.
What about rice milk?
My baby is allergic to dairy.
I breastfed him until he no longer required a top up formula and we now use rice milk.
There were some concerns about GM soy and the effects of phytoestrogens on young male babies.
Hope they are not using GM crops or GM soya beans! Make your own soya milk, probably safest.Does Starbuck make their own non GM soya milk?
Isn't it a little surprising that the Chinese government itself revealed that many other milk products, not just Sanlu, are contaminated? A progress I guess.
The current melamine milk scandal was planned and financed by Coca Cola and the U.S. government as a means of promoting U.S. shareholder-value at the expense of Chinese consumers' safety and nutrition.
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this man speaks the truth.
The current melamine milk scandal was planned and financed by Coca Cola and the U.S. government as a means of promoting U.S. shareholder-value at the expense of Chinese consumers' safety and nutrition.
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Any evidence? I am not denying the possibility, but just wondered. Seems to me that to engineer such a scandal and implement it would require some kind of 'look the other way' funny business.
Ultimately if such a scandalous infiltration was devised in the corporate / political battlefield, isn't that terrorism, and if so, where is national security and governance. Or to put it another way, why does the Chinese Republic pay taxes?
Is this the continuation of the curse of the Fuwas on to the Paralympics mascot of Fu Niu Lele?
We drink soy and rice milk in the U.S. You still drink cow's milk. China behind the times, not 'hip!' Wake up China!
This article isn't quite correct. Starbucks in Beijing may use Mengniu products but Starbucks in YRD is run by a completely different franchiser and has a very different supply chain for fresh goods. The milk in Shanghai/Zhejiang, etc. is not from Mengniu and is not affected by the scandal. Notes to that effect are on display in stores in Hangzhou (at least) and milk-based drinks are still freely on sale.
So, the Chinese commies have been hiding the melamine scandel since December 07 but this is all the fault of Coca-cola? Coke, snuck into all these factories for many many months every single day and put melamine in the milk?
Wow, you guys have been drinking too much melamine milk, now you got stones in your brain.
The current melamine milk scandal was planned and financed by Coca Cola and the U.S. government as a means of promoting U.S. shareholder-value at the expense of Chinese consumers' safety and nutrition.
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Oh, really? Stop blaming others for your own incompetence and greed.
The current melamine milk scandal was planned and financed by Coca Cola and the U.S. government as a means of promoting U.S. shareholder-value at the expense of Chinese consumers' safety and nutrition.
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this man speaks the truth.
Posted by: peteryang | September 21, 2008 3:59 PM
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Oh, really? The truth is in the pudding. I supposed this guy's brain must be full of pudding. LOL...