Nestle invests further in China
Beijing (AFP) Oct 31, 2008 Swiss food giant Nestle said Friday it was hoping to use more traditional Chinese ingredients in some of its products, as it expressed confidence in its Chinese-made food amid a toxic chemical scare. A new research centre in China will look into adding Chinese ingredients such as wolfberry and dried fruits into foods to be sold in the fast growing emerging markets, Nestle chief executive officer Paul Bulcke said. "(The) specific needs, nutritional needs of developing countries, they are going to have a higher importance and higher visibility," he told reporters at the launch of the 10-million-dollar research and development centre in Beijing. "I would say the Chinese medicine that we are looking for and working with here and going to do in this research and development centre is going to create some value for our portfolios not only in China but in other parts (of the world)." In the first nine months of this year, sales of Nestle products rose by 8.9 percent worldwide, while growth in the developing countries reached 17 percent. The inauguration of the Beijing research centre, Nestle's 24th in the world, comes amid an ongoing scandal in China over the mixing of the industrial chemical melamine into milk and livestock feed. Four babies died and 53,000 were sickened after drinking milk tainted with melamine, an industrial chemical added to make protein content look higher. Several China-made Nestle products, such as milk and chocolate bars, were pulled off shelves in Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea in recent weeks after local authorities detected melamine traces in them. However Nestle has always insisted its products were safe, saying in response to the Taiwan decision that melamine levels were "so minute that they are almost certainly present in any food product anywhere in the world". Bulcke repeated on Friday that Nestle had not produced any harmful foods linked to the melamine scandal. "Nestle never had a product that was unsafe," he said when talking about the melamine issue. Community Email This Article Comment On This Article Related Links Farming Today - Suppliers and Technology
Melamine-tainted milk products found in Vietnam Hanoi (AFP) Oct 3, 2008 Vietnam's food safety watchdog said Friday it had found the industrial chemical melamine in 18 milk and dairy products imported from China as well as Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. |
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