Sanyuan did not promptly clarified on the prosecution of the media

"In the full coverage of the media, we are almost naked and standing in front of the national public." After the press conference of the Ministry of Health on August 15, Zhang Liang, chairman of Shengyuan Nutrition Food Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Shengyuan). Sigh in an open letter.

Like stormy media reports and public torture, it pushed the Holy Dollar to the cusp of the storm. The Ministry of Health held a press conference on the incident of “Premature child precocious puberty caused by Sanyuan’s milk powder” and said that Sanyuan milk powder is not related to precocious puberty.

However, public doubts have not been completely eliminated. The role of the parties in this incident is even more intriguing.

Lag response

The incident of “Sanyuan’s milk powder suspected to be precocious puberty” has to some extent been reported by the media.

On July 11th, a television station in Hubei interviewed the mother of Xiao Fei (a pseudonym), a girl of more than one year old in Jiangxia District of Wuhan City, “exposing the milk powder consumed by Xiao Fei”. This news did not attract much public attention.

On August 5th, the “Health Times” of the People’s Daily reported that “Three girls, including Xiao Fei, have been eating a certain brand of milk powder, and the body has developed premature features.” Began to develop. When the milk powder merchant representative went to visit the Philippine family to give 2000 yuan, he was rejected. Prof. Jiang Zexi, deputy chairman of the Pediatric Surgery Branch of the Chinese Medical Association, and three other local experts did not determine that powdered milk is the “culprit” that caused the baby to become precocious. However, three baby girls were advised to stop using this brand of milk powder.

Subsequently, Fenghuang Wang and Oriental Morning Post directly named the name of Shengyuan, and many media at home and abroad followed suit. As a result, Shengyuan milk powder and "precocious puberty" were linked together.

At this time, it is easy for everyone to overlook the fact that Sanyuan milk powder is really high in hormone content and only three cases of baby girls can explain the problem. The Chinese media and the public who have not yet emerged from the shadow of the melamine tainted milk powder incident are extremely sensitive to the problem of milk powder safety.

In the latter part of July, the "Changjiang Business Daily" sent emergency letters to the departments of health, drug administration, quality inspection, industry and commerce, and disease control center in Hubei Province and Wuhan City, hoping to pay attention to this matter. The related departments of Hubei Province and Wuhan City did not make an open and appropriate response at the first time, and the negative impact of the incident was quickly amplified.

Previously, the parents of another baby girl wanted to send milk powder for inspection and contacted several departments.

It is reported that the local disease control department in Wuhan took milk powder from three baby girls' homes on July 30. The detection of hormones can produce results in up to a few days, but until the August 15 press conference of the Ministry of Health, Hubei Province and Wuhan City have yet to release test results.

In the face of media challenges, Sanyuan’s crisis public relations capabilities have also been tortured. On August 7th, Sanyuan issued a tough tone statement stating that there was no act of adding any "hormone" and other illegal substances. The company also stated that it has entrusted a law firm to file a lawsuit against Phoenix Satellite Television [2.41 8.07%] who participated in the report.

In fact, an insider of Shengyuan disclosed that in mid-July, the company had already known the situation of Wuhan baby girl. “But at first the board did not take it seriously.” According to this person, after a large amount of media coverage, Sanyuan’s public relations initiatives were improper. For example, children should be properly placed and clarified to the outside world, rather than sue the media first.

“The board of directors was opened on August 9th and the directors were not experts in product quality, so they asked people to speak,” said the person. “The people who talked said that this is a nonsense”. However, he expressed with regret that the board of directors only made the directors aware of the so-called "facts" and did not discuss necessary emergency plans.

On August 10, a spokesman for the Ministry of Health revealed to the media that it has instructed the office of the Food Safety Supervision and Supervision Leading Group of Hubei Province to verify and properly handle it as soon as possible. Two days later, the Ministry of Health stated that it has entrusted relevant technical agencies to inspect the relevant milk powder samples collected from the homes and markets of children in Hubei Province.

On August 15th, the Ministry of Health announced the results of banned exogenous sex hormones in 42 samples of Shengyuan milk powder. The detected values ​​of estrogen and progesterone in the samples of Hubei children were at home. 0.5 μg/kg and 33 μg/kg, and the remaining 41 samples ranged from 0.2 μg/kg to 2.3 μg/kg and 13 μg/kg to 72 μg/kg, respectively, in line with the domestic and international literature coverage. Thirty-one samples from 14 companies “have no abnormalities”.

According to the insider of Shengyuan, the company sent samples of all its competitors to foreign inspection agencies before the Ministry of Health announced the results of the tests. In order not to be the only "target," the Shengyuan and the Ministry of Health had a communication before the press conference.

In September 2008, Sanyuan was also listed in the list of 22 melamine problem milk powder companies. Since then, it took the company more than a year to gradually restore product popularity. The "hormone door" incident caused the Sanyuan brand to suffer further damage. "The damage this time, the government said that it passed, but the impression in the eyes of the people can not hold up the brand, the company can survive can not be said." Said the aforementioned Shengyuan insider.

Question to be solved

According to the statement of the Ministry of Health, there is no abnormality in Shengyuan milk powder hormone. However, at the press conference, whether or not the Hubei girls can continue to eat Sanyuan milk powder, several members of the Ministry of Health expert group and news spokesman Deng Haihua did not respond.

In fact, in the case of 3 infants and children, the relevant departments in Hubei only sent one sample to the Ministry of Health. When the correspondent called the Wuhan Food Safety Office again, the reply was that the relevant person was on vacation.

The statement made by Professor Wu Xueyi, a member of the experts group of the Ministry of Health and the Peking Union Medical College Hospital's "minor puberty period", has also caused more confusion. According to Wu Xueyu, in Hubei Province, 3 cases of suspected precocious puberty due to consumption of milk powder reconsidered and returned to visit, and they can only be judged as early breast development. The "hypothalamus-pituitary-gonadal axis" is unstable before the age of two years and can intermittently secrete estrogen to reach the lower limit of normal adult females. For estrogen-sensitive children, there will be more obvious breast development. However, the degree is relatively light and the duration is relatively short. This stage is called "minor adolescence."

Professor Ding Zongyi, a professor at the Institute of Pediatrics of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and chairman of the Children's Health Professional Committee of the Chinese Medical Doctor Association, told the reporter that in addition to informing the concept of “minor puberty,” experts need to inform more background knowledge. “This concept of diagnostic terms, What is the connotation and extension, what are the parameters for judging this concept, what is the normal reference value of these parameters?"

Wu Xueyuan also said that the breast development of Hubei girls is in the second period, that is, they can touch the milk nuclei, but it is only the size of a mung bean. If it is to the third or fourth period, it may be highly suspected whether there is a large amount of exogenous Estrogen effects, so it is recommended to observe these cases of baby girls to see if there will be further development.

After the parents of the baby girl learned of this statement, they expressed through the media their concerns about the child's uncertain future.

Professor Hu Yonghua, Dean of the School of Public Health of Peking University, told the journalist that although there is no definite proof of the link between milk powder and children's precocious puberty, the issue of precocious puberty is still worth noting, and the impact of environmental estrogens at home and abroad is After several years of research, we have not yet been able to make scientific determinations. I hope that more people can continue to pay attention to this situation and provide more cases to analyze.

At the same time, he said that when dealing with public health incidents, scientific issues are vulnerable to non-scientific issues.

Capital Market Punishment

On August 9, U.S. time, Nasdaq Stock Exchange (Nasdaq: SYUT) briefly fell over 35% to close at 12.72 U.S. dollars. Within a day, the stock price fell 4.69 U.S. dollars and the market value lost nearly 280 million U.S. dollars. On the following day, when San Yuan announced its financial losses that turned a profit in the first quarter of fiscal year 2011, the stock price stopped the decline and recovered slightly, eventually reporting a price of US$13.

Affected by the domestic “hormone gate”, on the day of the stock price drop of Sanyuan, there were a large number of retail investors who were selling, and all the recipients were institutional seats.

Shengyuan stock registered in the US OTC market in June 2005. In May 2007, it officially transferred to Nasdaq. The company’s share capital is 54 million shares. About 80% of the shares are held by the founders. The stock market has a relatively small liquidity band. The normal daily volume is between two or three thousand shares. In June this year, Shengyuan had just completed the issuance of 60 million U.S. dollars, and the daily trading volume increased to 89,000 shares.

From the beginning of July to August 12th, the short positions of the Sanyuan stocks grew rapidly, accumulating a total of 4.16 million shares, and the daily average trading volume of the short positions exceeded 23% of the normal daily average trading volume. From the perspective of the size and speed of opening positions, short-term short sellers have performed radically since July.

An analyst pointed out that “we saw short-term short sellers sensitively seizing this opportunity when they saw the initial incident of a baby experiencing a precocious baby encounter in Sanyuan.” This person believes that hedge funds often search for sudden bursts in various industries. The “soft point” of sex, after analysis, carries out the corresponding short-selling and short-selling arbitrage operations. “This operation of the Sanyuan is very accurate. It is evident that the Chinese dairy market has suffered from extreme vulnerability after a melamine incident.”

This is a punishment from the capital market.