An executive at Mengniu Dairy, one of China’s largest milk producers, and three employees from its online marketing company have been arrested for allegedly planning and executing a campaign to smear the company’s competitors.
The suspects are accused of organising a month-long operation that involved impersonating concerned parents and experts to question the safety of competitors’ products through the internet and the media.
The alleged campaign, if proven, would appear to be a cynical plan to capitalise on a string of scandals in the Chinese dairy industry, the worst of which led to the deaths of at least six infants and sickened more than 300,000 others in 2008 after they drank baby formula laced with industrial chemical melamine.