Back to The Jungle - The Atlantic (September 29, 2008)

The Chinese tainted-milk scandal is depriving people of their beloved White Rabbit candies—Tootsie-Roll shaped candies in red, white, and blue wrappers that are emblematic of childhood for Chinese all over the world and to anyone who has been in a Chinese-language class, in which students or teachers inevitably pass around a bag. That's a facetious way of saying that soon everyone will be checking labels to see whether there's milk in the ingredients list, the way people have learned how many unexpected products have, say, peanuts. Soon consumers will be learning different words that flag milk, like "casein," the way people who are gluten-intolerant have learned a new vocabulary of substances to watch out for. So far there's no evidence that U.S. products contain milk powder tainted with melamine, a toxic chemical used in... [read full story]