How much to trust the Chinese government announcements is always a question.  But they have arrested 22 people who work together to sell melamine for milk adulteration.  The melamine, which fools lab tests into believing there is high protein in the mile or other product, was added at the dairy farm or milk collection station level.

The announcement said police officers in northern China, the nation’s biggest dairy production area, had raided more than 40 dairy farms and milk stations in Hebei Province and seized more than 220 kilograms, or 485 pounds, of melamine, a chemical commonly used to make plastics and fertilizer. Melamine can also be used to illegally inflate the nutrition value of foods by fooling testers measuring protein levels. 

The government accused the group of operating as a kind of criminal syndicate, producing melamine in underground factories and then marketing it to dairy farms and milking stations in Hebei Province to adulterate the milk for profit.

When melamine was in the pet food last year,  you have to wonder if this was the only place the poison was added.  And even if this was a "criminal syndicate," somebody bought the stuff.  Y'know... 40 dairy farms and milk stations.  There is a market developed for this chemical. 

And 22 people did not live off of 485 pounds of melamine sales.  You know that they lived off of a lot more sales.

Here is another juicy tidbit. 

In China, journalists have known of the poison milk for months, but weren’t allowed to spread the news because of the Olympics. Even worse, it has been only four years since China’s last baby formula scandal, when fraudsters in Anhui Province manufactured fake formula from sugar and starch, killing at least 13 babies.

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