Free milk leaves sour taste

A supplier which delivered sour milk to a Bangkok school yesterday blamed a machine for “incompletely sealing” the cartons and apologised for the mistake.

Chawengsak Sanguanchit, chief executive of Thaimilk Dairy cooperative, said his factory was treating the incident, which caused alarm on social media, as a major lesson and vowed there will be no recurrence.

His clarification came after the cooperative was suspended as a supplier for the government’s free school milk scheme, pending a probe.

“We are recalling all milk cartons supplied to 12 schools in Bangkok and its neighbouring provinces,” Mr Chawengsak said.

The cooperative, which is based in Saraburi’s Muak Lek district, on April 19 delivered a total of 110,539 cartons, many of which were reported as being off by Patai Udom Suksa School last week.

“Sour milk was only found in 20 out of 100,000 cartons,” Mr Chawengsak said.

According to an inspection, one of the factory’s four machines incompletely sealed some cartons.

On Jun 5, Patai Udom Suksa School decided to stop handing out milk provided by the cooperative to its students after finding milk in many cartons was unusually thick and jelly-like despite being within its expiry date.

The school sent a circular to inform parents which later went viral on social networking sites.

“We’ve also sent an apology letter to the agriculture and cooperatives minister,” Mr Chawengsak added.

The Thai Food and Drug Administration has also begun an inspection into production, transportation and storage processes at the company.