恆天然再下注中國 誓做放心奶粉

HONG KONG — Six years ago, when tainted infant formula killed six babies in China and sickened 300,000, one of the biggest foreign investors in the sector was caught by surprise.

香港——六年前，當有毒的嬰兒配方奶粉導致中國6名嬰兒死亡、30萬名嬰兒患病時，中國嬰兒配方奶粉行業最大的外國投資者之一被打了個措手不及。

The investor, the Fonterra Cooperative Group of New Zealand, one of the world’s largest dairy companies, had put millions of dollars into a partnership with the Sanlu Group, a Chinese maker of infant formula that was one of several found to have mixed an industrial chemical into milk powder to artificially raise protein readings.

這個投資者便是全世界最大的乳製品公司之一、新西蘭恆天然集團(Fonterra Cooperative Group)。在中國嬰兒配方奶粉生產商三鹿集團等幾家企業爲了人爲提高蛋白質含量，在乳製品中摻加了一種工業用化學制劑，在這種做法被發現前，恆天然集團已與三鹿集團建立合作關係，並投入了數億美元。

Sanlu was declared bankrupt, and four of its executives were imprisoned. Fonterra was forced to write down the entirety of its investment of 200 million New Zealand dollars, or about $167 million at current exchange rates, in the Chinese venture.

三鹿宣佈破產，四名高管入獄。恆天然集團被迫減記投進這家中國企業的全部2億新西蘭元（約合10億元人民幣），按當前匯率計算，約爲1.67億美元。

Yet on Wednesday, Fonterra became the latest foreign company to make a new bet that it could turn a profit by bringing safer food to China. The company said it would spend more than $500 million in a deal with the Beingmate Baby and Child Food Company, a Chinese manufacturer of infant formula. A day earlier, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, an American private equity giant, announced an investment of about $400 million in China’s largest chicken breeder, Fujian Sunner Development, in a deal intended to improve food safety and quality.

但週三，恆天然成了最新一家重新下注的外國企業，希望能通過給中國帶來更安全的食品而獲利。該公司表示將在與中國嬰兒配方奶粉生產商貝因美嬰童食品股份有限公司達成的協議中出資逾5億美元。此前一天，美國私募股權巨頭科爾伯格-克拉維斯-羅伯茨公司(Kohlberg Kravis Roberts)宣佈將通過一項旨在改善食品安全和質量的協議，向中國最大的雞飼養企業福建聖農發展股份有限公司注資約4億美元。

“China is a completely different environment now; Beingmate is a completely different partner,” Theo Spierings, the chief executive of Fonterra, said on Wednesday in response to questions from reporters about the Sanlu episode, according to Reuters. “We are very focused on learning from the past and moving on to the future.”

路透社報道稱，恆天然首席執行官西奧·施皮林斯(Theo Spierings)週三在迴應記者有關三鹿事件的問題時表示，“中國現在的環境完全不同，貝因美也是一個完全不同的合作伙伴。我們非常注重吸取經驗和教訓，面向未來。”

Food safety scandals occur with disturbing frequency in China. This week alone, according to reports in the state-run news media: The authorities seized more than 30,000 tons of chicken feet, a common menu item in China, that had been contaminated by a hydrogen peroxide cleaning agent; and in Zhejiang Province, 17 people were in court on accusations of selling 38 tons of dog meat — consumed in parts of the country — that had been poisoned when the animals were slaughtered with cyanide or overdoses of anesthetics.

在中國，食品安全醜聞出現的頻率令人擔憂。據官方新聞媒體報道，僅在本週，當局就查封了3萬多噸被一種過氧化氫清潔劑污染過的雞爪。在中國，雞爪是一道常見菜品。在浙江，17人在法庭上被控銷售了38噸有毒的狗肉——中國部分地區的民衆喜食狗肉——那些狗是被氰化物或過量麻醉劑藥死的。

The challenge confronting big foreign food companies in China is how to ensure that their standards are enforced by all workers at all stages of the food supply chain. Ignorance can be a more common problem than outright deception, experts say.

大型外國食品公司在中國面臨的挑戰是，如何確保食品供應鏈上所有環節的所有工作人員都執行它們的標準。專家稱，相比於徹底的欺騙，無知是一個更普遍的問題。

“Most of the time it’s not that something is being hidden, it’s more that the people are not aware of the standards that Western companies expect,” said Sébastien Breteau, the chief executive of AsiaInspection. The company conducts spot checks on all kinds of factories in China on behalf of the companies they supply, and among food factories, the failure rate for inspections so far this year has been more than 50 percent.

“大部分時候，不是隱瞞了什麼，更多的是人們沒意識到西方公司期待的標準，”亞洲品質檢驗有限公司(AsiaInspection)首席執行官塞巴斯蒂安·布勒託(Sébastien Breteau)說。該公司代表接受供貨的企業，對包括食品廠在內的中國所有工廠進行抽查。今年，截至目前的不合格率超過50%。

“What I’ve seen,” Mr. Breteau said, “when you sit down in a factory and you explain what matters for a client, if you train them over more demanding standards in terms of manufacturing, then they catch up with it very quickly.”

“我發現，”布勒託說，“當你坐在工廠裏解釋什麼東西對客戶來說很重要時，如果你對他們進行更多生產標準方面的培訓，他們會很快趕上。”

Although food companies with foreign backing are often financially stronger and are perceived as having higher quality and safety standards, some prominent lapses in China have shown that such companies can still run into problems. Fonterra’s investment in Sanlu was an early example. Last week, the American food producer H. J. Heinz recalled several batches of baby cereal products after they were discovered to contain high levels of lead.

雖然有外國背景的食品公司在財務方面往往更有優勢，而且也被認爲擁有更高的質量和安全標準，但是中國一些突出的失檢現象說明，此類公司還是會出問題。恆天然公司對三鹿的投資就是一個較早的案例。上週，美國食品生產商亨氏(H. J. Heinz)則召回了幾批含鉛量超標的嬰兒米粉。

And last month, the OSI Group, an American-owned supplier for McDonald’s, KFC and other fast-food chains, became the subject of an investigation by the police and food safety officials in Shanghai. A local television station had broadcast a program accusing OSI employees of doctoring labels to extend expiration dates on chicken and beef products and showed footage seemingly of workers scooping up meat from the floor and putting it back on conveyor belts for processing.

上個月，作爲麥當勞(McDonald’s)、肯德基(KFC)和其他快餐連鎖店供應商的福喜集團（OSI Group，其母公司爲美國歐喜集團）成了上海警方和食品安全官員的調查對象。一個當地電視臺的節目譴責了福喜員工修改雞肉和牛肉產品的商標以延長其保質期的行爲，還播放了一些視頻資料，畫面中，工作人員似乎把掉在地上的肉撿了起來，扔回傳送帶進行加工。

For OSI, which is based in Aurora, Ill., and had been known for its industry-leading operations and quality control, the episode was jarring. In response to food safety concerns in China, it had invested hundreds of millions of dollars building a chicken-meat supply chain in the country that included a feed mill, hatcheries and slaughtering operations. In the United States, it focuses on processing meat that is purchased from other suppliers.

歐喜集團總部設在伊利諾伊州奧羅拉，一向以業內領先的業務和質量控制聞名，對於它而言，這件事的影響很大。爲了迴應中國的食品安全問題，它還投資數百萬美元在中國修建了一座雞肉供應廠，其中包括一座飼料加工廠、幾座孵化場和屠宰場。公司在美國基本只會對購自其他供應商的肉進行加工。

In the Fonterra deal, which is subject to regulatory approvals and calls for it to take a 20 percent stake in Beingmate, the two companies will import infant formula ingredients from Fonterra’s dairies and manufacturing sites in New Zealand, Australia and Europe for sale in China.

在恆天然的交易中——公司目前正在接受管理機構審批並計劃購買貝因美20%的股份——兩家公司將從恆天然位於新西蘭、澳大利亞和歐洲的奶製品廠和工廠進口嬰兒配方材料，然後在中國出售。

“Extensive due diligence has taken place from both sides,” said Mr. Spierings of Fonterra, “and we have made arrangements on governance very clear.”

“雙方都在進行大規模的盡職調查，”恆天然的施皮林斯說，“而且我們在管理上有很明確的約定。”

Experts say that China’s food industry tends to be highly competitive and to have low profit margins, meaning that businesses can be tempted to skip steps to save money, in some cases turning a blind eye to possible dangers to consumers.

專家表示，中國的食品行業的競爭越來越激烈，而且利潤空間很小，這意味着各企業很可能會爲了省錢而略過一些步驟，有時甚至會對可能傷害消費者的現象視而不見。

“Producing food as a business is not the same as producing T-shirts,” said Peter Karim Ben Embarek, a food safety scientist at the World Health Organization in Geneva who was previously based in China. “If you cut corners making T-shirts, some customers might be upset, but if you do it with chickens, you might end up killing people.” He added: “You have a bit of a Wild West situation where the public oversight is still lacking in terms of on-the-ground implementation.”

“生產食品與製造T恤不一樣，”日內瓦世界衛生組織(World Health Organization)的食品安全科學家彼得·卡里姆·本·安巴雷克(Peter Karim Ben Embarek)說。他以前曾在中國工作。“如果你做T恤時偷工減料，有些顧客可能會很失望，但是如果你在加工雞肉時這樣做，最後可能就會害死人。”他還說：“這裏的情況有點像美國原來的西大荒，在實際操作過程中仍然缺乏公衆監督。”

Gao Guan, the deputy secretary of the China Meat Association, said one problem is that China does not have enough food inspectors.

中國肉類協會(China Meat Association)副祕書長高觀說，其中一個問題是中國沒有足夠的食品檢查員。

“The level of regulation and enforcement is too low,” Mr. Gao said. He cited recurring problems at meat processors, which can be reckless in their pursuit of profit. “If you rely on the individual processors, then you will never be able to enforce safety standards, because everybody is just trying to make fast money.”

“監管和執行水平太低，”高觀說。他指出，肉類加工廠問題頻出，它們很可能會不計後果地追逐利潤。“如果你去信任個別的加工商，就永遠無法落實食品安全標準，因爲都在圖短期的利益。”