These Milks come from those Powders

In Mexico, there is a long tradition of cheating in the supply of dairy products packaged for social programs. Hence, it should not be surprising that the Venezuelan corruption had found in that country the perfect formula to include in the so-called CLAP Boxes a paste purchased at auction price as cow's powdered milk. For a mysterious reason, ghostly or barely known companies are the ones monopolizing purchase orders from Venezuela.
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The
verification that the powdered milk included in the so-called "CLAP boxes" is
fraudulent,
opens questions about the vendors and intermediaries selected by the Venezuelan
authorities and the controls that the authorities could apply on the imported
product. But that inquiry must not overlook the origin of the merchandise,
Mexico. This country registers a dismal tradition of poor quality dairy products
intended for its social programs. False information in the nutrition facts label
and low supply of nutrients are part of a verifiable pattern both in the CLAP
program of Nicolás Maduro Government and in successive initiatives of the
Mexican Government.
From
as early as 2004, the Consumer Protection Federal Agency (Profeco), one of the
federal agencies in Mexico dealing with consumers’ right, have been warning that
some brands of milk show problems in commercial information or bear misleading
and deceptive legends. In 2006, through the Ministry of Economy, Profeco
revealed that 400 brands of dairy products cheated consumers by offering soy or
rice drinks as milk. Already in 2008, the agency imposed large fines on more
than a hundred brands and banned the sale of four million
products.
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"Profeco
makes verifications every day through the Office of the Assistant Attorney
General for Verification - which this laboratory is attached to - and the
Verification and Supervision Department. We verify the different points of sale.
If there are irregularities concerning the components, a report is made, and
based on that, an administrative process takes place in the form of a trial, and
if the irregularity is proved, a fine is imposed," explains Engels Ruelas
Olvera, General Director of the National Laboratory of
Profeco.
In
fact, one of the companies that appear as vendors of the Venezuelan CLAP
program, Deshidratados Alimenticios e Industriales (DAI), was awarded dozens of
contracts from 2012 to 2016 by the Mexican federal government to provide milk to
social programs such as "Apadrina a un niño indígena" (Sponsor a indigenous
child),"
Despensas discapacitados" (Pantries for the
Disabled),"Pequeños en movimiento" (Growing children), and "Creciendo sanos"
(Healthy Growing), among others.
On
May 15, 2017, the Health Ministry of the State of that entity, through the
Federal Commission for the Protection Against Sanitary Risks (Cofepris), gave
DAI, registered in the state of Nuevo León, a certificate of free sale and
export to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
By
that time, massive
purchases of food from Mexican companies
had skyrocketed thanks to at least two intermediaries from the Venezuelan
government, namely, Group
Grand Limited,
a company linked to Colombian businessman Alex Saab, who Luisa Ortega Díaz, the
Public Prosecutor removed from office, directly linked to Nicolás Maduro, or
Postar
Intertrade Limited,
a company registered in Barbados and owned by Venezuelan businessman Samark
López, whom the US Treasury Department describes as the "front man" of the Vice
President of the Republic, Tareck El Aissami.
DAI
is the producer of the Mac Leche brand, "the one with the red cow", as the
Venezuelan consumers refer to in allusion to its emblem and logo. Among the
eight brand samples analyzed by the Institute of Food Science and Technology of
Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV) - at the request of Armando.info -,
collected from September to December 2017, that is the one with the worst
nutritional profiles. Although the package affirms that it contains 26 grams
(0.91 oz) of protein per 100 grams (3.52 oz) of product, the chemical analysis
of UCV found that it barely reached 8.79 grams (0.31 oz), a fraction of a
quarter of the reference intake established by the Venezuelan Government through
its regulatory agencies. In the laboratory, Mac Leche had a proportion of sodium
that doubles the quantity indicated on the packaging, which is, by the way, the
maximum allowed by national and international milk standards. This
characteristic produces the salty taste that consumers often complain about in
social media and that is already part of the image
- probably undesired - of
the brand.

These
distortions alone already violate two Mexican standards, NOM-155-SCFI-2012 that
establishes among the nutritional properties of milk a minimum of 34 grams (1.19
oz) of proteins per liter, and NOM-051-SCFI/SSA1-2010 establishing that the
label information "must be true and be described and presented in such a way as
not to mislead the consumer regarding the nature and characteristics of the
product."
However,
business opportunities in Venezuela are so attractive that DAI, in addition to
its retail participation in the CLAP combos with the Mac Leche brand, appears
delivering from October to November 2017 shipments of around 2,100 tons of
powdered milk for the Venezuelan state corporation Sole Corporation of
Productive and Food Services (Cuspal), attached to the Ministry of Food, based
on the records of Puerto Cabello, Carabobo state, the country's main port. The
Mac Leche brand was so broadly recognized among low purchasing power consumers,
beneficiaries of the welfare programs of the Government of Nicolás Maduro, that
during some months of 2017, DAI had to coexist with another brand of milk, a “me
too” that openly tried to imitate the colors, name and visual identity of Mac
Leche.
DAI’s
legal representative Jaime H. García was contacted, but by the time this report
was closed, he had not clarified the disparity between the information reported
on the labels by the company and the UCV analysis, nor the case of the
counterfeit of the product. Neither did the Cofepris Mexican authorities offer
their version about the irregularities.
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Ghostly Milking
The
singularity of the DAI - Mac Leche case is that it is a company and a brand that
operate both in the Mexican and Venezuelan markets openly and simultaneously.
Most CLAP dairy substitutes are produced by companies with unknown histories and
through brands like Lacto Más and Suprema, which are not even sold in the
supermarket networks of Mexico and are exclusively produced for
Venezuela.
Both
Lacto Más and Suprema are packaged by Grupo Brandon, an unknown company in the
Mexican food industry. Anyone who follows the address reflected in the packaging
of both brands will arrive at a house in Colonia del Valle, San Pedro, Garza
García, in Nuevo León. But there operates another company, the representatives
of which say they have nothing to do with milk production or processing. The
chemical analysis of UCV made to the Supreme brand milk reveals that this
product barely contains 4.7 grams (0.16 oz) of protein per 100 grams (3.52 oz)
instead of the 29 grams (1.02 oz) reflected on the label, and only 115.33
milligrams (0.0040 oz) of calcium, well below the 900 milligrams (0.0031 oz)
that it offers. An inscription on the packaging reads, "To be distributed in the
Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.” Despite this, the CLAP business for Grupo
Brandon seems to be booming. Recently, the Santa Paula brand arrived in
Venezuela, also packed by the company.

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Something
similar to Grupo Brandon occurs with Dilac, responsible for the production of KF
Milk and Pure Milk, both also analyzed by UCV. Both brands prefer to identify
themselves as "fortified dairy products" instead of as milk. But this barely
perceptible transparency ends there. At the alleged offices of the company, they
said they did not know those brands. It is a dairy company, but it does not
export products to the Mexican market.
Since the beginning of the CLAPs, no Venezuelan official has explained why these barely known Mexican companies or the intermediaries that have ended up buying that merchandise were chosen.
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This is a work researched and published simultaneously by Armando.Info and the Excélsior of Mexico.