In response to the increasing quality and quantity demands of food worldwide, a long-term effort have been made by food manufactures. Companies started to introduce chemical ingredients into their food products, known as food additives. However, with the addition of countless types of food additives, serious food safety problems, or business ethical problem, eventually came out.

In 2008 July 16th, Sanlu, which is a powdered milk company in China, was revealed to have been adding a poisonous ingredient in their powdered milk, which is melamine. It could cause kidney stones and other kidney damages to human.

In my own perspective, the melamine contamination event happened due to two  factors—external and internal. Internally, Sanlu did break the unspoken rule in business world, which is to “increase its profit so long as it stays within the rules of game, which is to say, engage in open and free competition without deception or fraud.” They focus on making more  profit and failed to take all their effort to guarantee the safety of their product.  To test the product comprehensively to ensure it is safe.  Externally, the government should also take responsibilities for their failure in strengthening the system of business law (the company didn’t put in effort to guarantee the safety of their products due to the loose enforcement of business law) and made it strict enough that company would abide by it. Besides, it generated a trust issue in Chinese powdered milk market. Especially, the people who believed in this brand of milk powder and bought it for their baby began to buy all food with imported brand rather than the domestic brands.

References ：

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7701477.stm

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924224409001551

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