Thursday, October 02, 2008 Oro stores offer buy-one-take-one for Chinese products By Cong B. Corrales
A BUYING frenzy of ‘buy-one-take-one” imported China-made food products occurred in some stores in Cagayan de Oro a day after traders withdrew the recalled and banned products early this week, witnesses said.
Nimfa Caballero, 36, a mother of four, said she was able to buy Wednesday some banned Chinese milk products in a store that offered cheap Chinese merchandise at Cogon market.
“It was a good bargain, and shoppers like me took the opportunity of buying some,” Caballero, a resident of Magsaysay Street, told Sun.Star Cagayan de Oro.
Aside from dairy products, she said milk derivatives such as yogurt, candies and biscuits were also sold at lowered prices.
She said she was aware of the tainted milk scandal in China, but this did not discourage her from buying potentially melamine-laced products.
“I don’t think those products have reached the country. Maybe what the government is doing is more on prevention, to explain the ban or recall order,” she said in the dialect.
Verifying Caballero’s story, Sun.Star Cagayan de Oro visited several stores selling imported Chinese merchandise and found most of the shelves empty of Chinese goods.
In a popular Chinese store along Velez Street, shelves that previously displayed Chinese goods had been replaced with locally made products.
Christine Fuentes, a store owner, said she noticed the slow disappearance of Chinese dairy goods that used to be openly sold in Cogon market.
"Maybe the buy-one-take-one promo was intended to recoup their potential losses from the BFAD (Bureau of Food and Drugs) ban,” Fuentes said in the dialect.
Fuentes said she frequents Chinese stores because their goods are usually priced lower than those sold in malls and department stores.
But after reading the article on the milk scandal, she said she stopped buying even with the tempting low prices.
Meanwhile, results of the laboratory test being conducted by the BFAD on the China-made milk products and by-products will be released on Friday, said Health Secretary Francisco Duque III.
"I was informed the equipment that BFAD would need for the test arrived the other night (Monday) so the results are expected to be out by Friday," Duque said.
According to him, they really wanted to fast track the testing on the China-made milk products recalled in the local market last week so that the consumers would finally be calmed down.
The food agency collected samples of milk when the milk scandal broke out in China.
BFAD Director Leticia Gutierrez said they had already validated the methods and calibrated the instruments that they would use in testing the samples for melamine contamination.
She said the agency is just waiting for the "reference standards" for melamine before analyzing the samples.
Last Tuesday, Duque said an interagency body has been created to remove any confusion that may have risen in the implementation of the Department of Health (DOH)-declared ban on the China-made milk products and by-products.
The panel, to be headed by the health secretary, is composed of representatives from BFAD, Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG), Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), Department of Justice (DOJ), Bureau of Customs (BOC), and the Presidential Anti-Smuggling Group (PASG).
The DOH has imposed a total ban on all milk products and by-products following the discovery of melamine contamination in China.
The tainted milk from Sanlu Group Co. has so far claimed the lives of four children in China and caused illness to at least 55,000 Chinese children.
Fifty-four milk products have been initially collected by BFAD for testing, which is expected to be completed in two weeks.
BFAD will issue a list of products that were found contaminated with melamine and a separate list that were found negative of the toxic substance. (With Sunnex)
