Tightening quality control

Early this month, while on an assignment in Hohhot, I was taken on a tour of Mengniu and Yili, two of the most prominent businesses in Inner Mongolia. I was so impressed by what I saw that I called my wife right there in a corridor overlooking the assembly line.

"All the facilities are imported from Germany or Sweden. The place is fully automated and immaculate. We have to wear shoe covers even though there is a glass partition between where we stand and where all the production takes place. Every batch of milk is tested so that germs are expunged," I told her.

My wife has always hesitated when buying domestically made food products. Though I've never been inside a foreign dairy company, I firmly believed it wouldn't be much different from what I saw at Mengniu and Yili.