Six people involved in China's Sanlu tainted milk scandal went on trial on Friday in north China's Hebei Province. A bankruptcy petition for Sanlu has also been filed, as the Group now faces 1.1 billion yuan or 160 million U.S. dollars of net debts. The latest legal procedures against Sanlu aroused a new round of public discussion on how a brand that went back 50 years was ruined overnight.

The Workers' Daily carries a commentary saying Sanlu brought about this fate upon itself. In fact, Sanlu knew it had problems with its milk sources at the end of 2007, but the company turned a blind eye to it.

As dairy companies were not willing to spend extra money to set up their own milk bases, most of them were involved in vicious competition for milk resources. Sanlu was one of them, who cared more about the quantity but not the quality of milk resources. This sowed the seeds of the tainted milk scandal.

The paper cites some experts as saying that the Sanlu scandal has unravelled the in-depth problems and conflicts in China's dairy industry. Now, many dairy companies are pursuing rapid self expansion and are engaging in vicious competition. In order to gain control of milk resources and sell more products, they reduced supervision to make things easier. This could also explain why they preferred to hide the truth - and not act - when they found problems with their products.

The paper goes on to point out that local governments and supervision bureaus should reflect and rectify errors they made. The tainted milk scandal would not have occurred if government officials performed their duties.