By GILLIAN WONG
Associated Press Writer

BEIJING (AP) — More than 200 families whose babies fell ill after drinking tainted infant formula said Monday they are taking their case to China’s highest court after being repeatedly ignored by lower courts.

The lawsuit involving 213 families poses a challenge to the government’s attempts to end one of the country’s worst food safety crises. The scandal over milk spiked with an industrial chemical has been blamed for the deaths of six babies and the sickening of nearly 300,000 others with kidney stones and kidney failure.

The 22 Chinese dairies involved have proposed a 1.1 billion yuan ($160 million) compensation plan, but many parents want higher compensation and long-term treatment for their babies.

“The reason why I’m bringing this case to court is not about money but about my child’s future,” said Zhang Ge, a single mother in Beijing who quit her job at an Internet advertising company to look after her sick son.

Beijing attorney Xu Zhiyong said lawyers for the families mailed an application Friday to the Supreme People’s Court in Beijing to sue the dairies.

But it seemed unlikely the court would hear the lawsuit, given that lower courts have so far refused to hear at least a dozen lawsuits in the politically sensitive scandal.

The lawyers’ group has not been notified if the application has been received. Phone calls to the inquiry office of the Supreme People’s Court rang unanswered Monday.

The government and the dairy companies had hoped the nationwide payout scheme would ease public anger. Instead, it has given embittered, outspoken parents across the country a common cause.

Xu said the lawsuit seeks 36 million yuan ($5.3 million) in total compensation for the families. It also demands payment of medical expenses incurred from tainted milk-related problems for the rest of the victims’ lives.

“The compensation being offered is just too little,” Xu said in a phone interview. “The parents are also not happy about the plan to give free medical care only till 18 years of age.”

Previous applications to sue Sanlu Group Co., the dairy at the center of the scandal, in lower courts in Hebei, where the company is based, were ignored, Xu said.

Investigations have found that milk suppliers added melamine, which like protein is rich in nitrogen, to watered-down milk to fool quality tests for protein content. Melamine, a chemical used to make plastics and fertilizers, can cause kidney stones and kidney failure.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.

By HENRY SANDERSON
Associated Press Writer

BEIJING (AP) — A court on Monday refused to accept a lawsuit filed against a Chinese dairy by dozens of families who said their children were sickened or killed by tainted milk, lawyers involved in the case said.

The 63 defendants in the first-known group lawsuit stemming from the scandal, including the parents of two children who died, were seeking nearly 14 million yuan ($2 million) in compensation from state-owned Sanlu Group Co., Beijing-based lawyer Xu Zhiyong said.

The dairy based in the northern Chinese city of Shijiazhuang was at the center of China’s worst food safety crisis in years, in which six babies are believed to have died and nearly 300,000 became sick with urinary problems after drinking infant formula tainted with the industrial chemical melamine.

Three of six defense lawyers presented the suit to the Hebei Supreme Court’s registry office on Monday but were told it could not be accepted because government departments were still investigating.

“We think it was their excuse for not accepting the case. We will continue to push the case and give them pressure,” said activist lawyer Li Fangping, who helped organize the case.

The court in Hebei, the province where Sanlu is based, took the documents, lawyers said.

“We presented our documents and we expressed our concern. We will keep contacting them to see what’s the progress,” attorney Lan Zhixue said.

China’s Health Ministry acknowledged last week that six babies likely died, twice the previous figure, and 294,000 babies suffered urinary problems from drinking contaminated infant formula, a six-fold increase from its last tally in September.

The government has said that Sanlu knew as early as last year that its products were tainted with melamine and that company and local officials first tried to cover it up.

Like a number of major dairies, Sanlu was said to have excellent quality controls that allowed it to enjoy a government-granted inspection-exempt status.

So far there has been no word on compensation for the sick babies, apart from an offer of free medical care. At least a dozen individual cases have been filed against Sanlu but are caught in a legal limbo, while lawyers who have volunteered to help families have been pressured to drop their work.

Courts often turn down group suits, preferring to deal one-by-one with cases to appear more productive and avoid running afoul of Communist Party officials, who ultimately control the judiciary.

Hearing a group case on tainted milk would also bring sensitive issues of culpability out in court. The central government said it only learned of the scandal Sept. 8 — it does not say how — even though inspection, health and other government departments in Hebei province and Beijing knew earlier.

The lawyers were told by the Shijiazhuang prosecutor’s office that criminal cases involving Sanlu milk were still being discussed and have not begun to be prosecuted.

The suit lays out eight compensation packages, depending on the severity of illness, and seeks a total of 6.82 million yuan ($991,000) for medical fees, cost of food and transportation fees for the group, as well as 6.91 million yuan ($1 million) for psychological damage.

Xu said there were two cases of deaths among the claimants, one in Henan province and another in Gansu province.

The illnesses of so many children highlighted the widespread practice of adding melamine — often used in manufacturing plastics — to watered-down milk to fool protein tests. Melamine is rich in nitrogen, which registers as protein on many routine tests.

Though melamine is not believed to be harmful in tiny amounts, higher concentrations produce kidney stones, which can block the ducts that carry urine from the body, and in serious cases can cause kidney failure.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.

By CHARLES HUTZLER
Associated Press Writer

LITI VILLAGE, China (AP) _ Li Xiaokai died of kidney failure on the old wooden bed in the family farmhouse, just before dawn on a drizzly Sept. 10.

Her grandmother wrapped the 9-month-old in a wool blanket. Her father handed the body to village men for burial by a muddy creek. The doctors and family never knew why she got sick. A day later, state media reported that the type of infant formula she drank had been adulterated with an industrial chemical.

Yet the deaths of Xiaokai and at least four other babies are not included in China’s official death toll from its worst food safety scare in years. The Health Ministry’s count stands at only three deaths.

The stories of these uncounted babies suggest that China’s tainted milk scandal has exacted a higher human toll than the government has so far acknowledged. Without an official verdict on the deaths, families worry they will be unable to bring lawsuits and refused compensation.

So far, nobody is suggesting large numbers of deaths are being concealed. But so many months passed before the scandal was exposed that it’s likely more babies fell sick or died than official figures reflect.

Beijing’s apparent reluctance to admit a higher toll is reinforcing perceptions that the authoritarian government cares more about tamping down criticism than helping families. Lawyers, doctors and reporters have said privately that authorities pressured them to not play up the human cost or efforts to get compensation from the government or Sanlu, the formula maker.

“It’s hard to say how the government will handle this matter,” said Zhang Xinkui, a Beijing-based lawyer amassing evidence of the contamination for a possible lawsuit. “There may be many children who perhaps died from drinking Sanlu powdered milk or perhaps from a different cause. But there’s no system in place to find out.”

In the weeks since Xiaokai’s death, her father and his older brother have talked to lawyers and beseeched health officials, with no result.

“My heart is in pain,” said her father, Li Xiaoquan, a short, taciturn farmer with hooded eyes. From a corner of his farmhouse courtyard in central China’s wheat and corn flatlands, he pulls a worn green box that once held apples and is now stuffed with empty pink wrappers of the Sanlu Infant Formula Milk Powder that Xiaokai nursed on. “We think someone, the company, should compensate us.”

In coal-mining country 450 miles (725 kilometers) to the northwest, Tian Xiaowei waits for his wife to leave their newly built house before removing five small photos of a wide-eyed baby boy from a brown plastic document folder. “She breaks down when she sees them,” Tian said. The photos are the only mementos left of year-old Tian Jin, who died in August.

“I want these people who poisoned the milk powder to receive the severest punishment under law. I want an explanation and I want consolation for my dead child,” said Tian, a broad-shouldered apple farmer and part-time truck driver. “I feel like we could die from regret. If we knew that it was contaminated, we would never have fed him that.”

Since September, when the scandal was first reported, Beijing has said that Shijiazhuang Sanlu Group Co., the dairy, knew as early as last year that its products were tainted with melamine and that company and local officials first tried to cover it up.

The government has promised free medical treatment to the 50,000 children sickened, and unspecified compensation to them and families of the dead. The Health Ministry, which is coordinating the government’s response, declined to answer questions about the compensation plan and whether it was investigating deaths and illnesses not yet counted by the government.

Melamine, a chemical used as a flame retardant and binding agent to make cooking utensils and industrial coatings, is rich in nitrogen. As such, it makes an attractive low-cost additive to milk and other foods; nitrogen registers as protein on many routine tests.

Though melamine is not believed harmful in tiny amounts, higher concentrations produce kidney stones, which can block the ducts that carry urine from the body, and in serious cases can cause kidney failure.

All eight babies who died were diagnosed with kidney failure, according to the families, medical records or state media accounts. All also supposedly drank Sanlu infant formula or powdered milk.

The fathers of Li Xiaokai and Tian Jin both wave inch-thick sheaves of medical reports and tests from their children’s stays in hospitals. Xiaokai, a twin older than her sister Xiaoyan by three minutes, was fed with Sanlu formula while the younger girl nursed on breast milk because their mother did not have enough for both, family members said.

An ultrasound examination of Xiaokai’s kidneys at the Zhengzhou Children’s Hospital on Aug. 21 found a stone in each kidney that was about the size of a small marble and 2½ times larger than what doctors consider a critical threshold.

Tian Xiaowei, the apple farmer, sent bags of Sanlu infant formula to a government laboratory in September. The Xi’an Product Quality Supervision Institute’s report, dated Oct. 8, found melamine levels of 1,748 milligrams per kilogram, more than 800 times the government-set limit.

Then there’s Wang Siyu, the daughter of an accountant and proprietor of an Internet cafe in the central city of Shangqiu. Siyu was fed Sanlu products from birth and developed recurring kidney problems in May last year, at age 3, said her mother, Li Songmei.

Twice hospitalized, she was taken off Sanlu milk and started to recover, only to fall ill again when the family began to give her Sanlu products, Li said. Sick for a third time and swollen, she died of kidney failure at the Zhengzhou Children’s Hospital on May 2, said Li.

“Ever since she was born, she had been using Sanlu milk. Only when she felt sick and couldn’t eat did she stop taking Sanlu,” said Li.

Others among the five include an infant in far western Xinjiang province, whose story was posted on the provincial government Web site, and a 6-month-old boy in southeastern Jiangxi province, reported by the New Legal Daily. A reporter who worked on the article and would give only his surname, Liu, said the newspaper was careful not to blame Cai Cong’s death on Sanlu formula because “the local government has not yet reached a verdict.”

Medical experts say kidney stones in infants are rare. Doctors in several parts of China first noticed a rise in cases in the past two years. Pediatric urologist Feng Dongchuan tried to sound an alarm, posting an item on his blog in July about a spike in cases at his hospital in the central city of Xuzhou and in nearby Nanjing city. Feng pinpointed infant formula as the likely cause.

Feng at first refused requests for interviews, then responded in a terse e-mail: “The chance for infants or small children to come down with kidney stones is very small, and having stones that obstruct both kidneys is even more rare.”

Like the others, the Li family grew distressed when Xiaokai started to become fussy in July. With their two-acre (8,000-square-meter) farm in Liti Village, her parents never had much money and already had a child, a son. But they wanted a larger family, bucking the one-child family planning limits. Xiaokai was “the more active” of the twins, said her 70-year-old grandmother, Li Xuan.

By August, Xiaokai was running a high fever, unabated by ever higher doses of medicine. Alarmed after she stopped eating and urinating, the family took her to the nearby Runnan county hospital on Aug. 18. The doctors diagnosed kidney failure and rushed her overnight by ambulance to Zhengzhou Children’s Hospital, three hours away and the best in Henan province.

“They knew right away,” said the father, Li. Xiaokai was run thr
ough tests and put on intravenous solutions to try to shrink the kidney stones. Unable to stay with her or afford a hotel, Li and his mother slept on the pavement outside the hospital. After five days, the hospital said it could do no more.

“The doctors wouldn’t operate because they said ‘she’s too small,’” said Li. They suggested taking Xiaokai to Beijing or Shanghai. Hospital officials declined comment and refused to make Xiaokai’s doctor available.

The hospital stay in Zhengzhou cost 7,331 yuan, or $1,070 — about a year’s cash income for the family — and they had already borrowed money to pay for Xiaokai’s care.

So Li brought Xiaokai home to die. They took her to a traditional medicine doctor in the village, who gave her an herbal medicine and confirmed the grim prognosis. “The old doctor told us ‘the child will die in 10 to 18 days,’” Li said.

Early on Sept. 10 while it was still dark, the grandmother called Li into the side room where she and Xiaokai slept. “Her stomach was puffy” — a sign of kidney failure — “and she wasn’t breathing,” he said.

In many parts of north China, the death of a child is considered a misfortune that can bring bad luck on a family and is best suppressed. Accordingly, Li Haiqin, a cousin, and three other men took Xiaokai to a creek on the far side of the village fields. They put a brick in the blanket with the body and placed it in a shallow hole under a path between rows of poplar trees. Then they walked back in silence beneath a gray dawn and a light rain. No close family members were there and none was told where the grave is.

Xiaokai’s family says Beijing had waived regular inspections of Sanlu because its quality controls were said to be excellent. “The government should shoulder its responsibility. This was a national brand, inspection-exempt products,” said Xiaokai’s uncle, Li Shenyi.

Since the death, Li Shenyi approached the Runnan county Health Bureau to classify Xiaokai’s death as caused by tainted formula. “They said the upper levels (of government) were working on it,” he said.

The county health bureau referred calls to its supervisors in Zhumadian city, who said ultimately it was up to Beijing.

“Right now, the Health Ministry has no clear explanation on how the victim’s families should be compensated,” said a Ms. Shang at the Zhumadian Health Bureau’s medical affairs office. “Nobody knows.”

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.

HONG KONG (AP) _ Macau authorities say three more children in the Chinese gambling enclave have developed kidney stones that may be linked to Chinese milk contaminated with the industrial chemical melamine.

A government statement says the three girls aged from 4 to 8 are in stable condition and do not require hospitalization.

The Monday statement says the children attend schools where authorities provide students with free milk produced by Yili Industrial Group Co.

Yili is one of several Chinese dairies implicated in a scandal on the mainland in which melamine-laced dairy products have killed four infants and sickened more than 50,000.

Melamine is used to make plastics and fertilizer.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.