Earlier this week, Wang Dingmian (王丁棉), former vice-president of the Guangdong Provincial Dairy Association, said publicly that China’s milk industry had only itself to blame for the fact that China has the lowest quality standards in the world. Wang told Chinese media that such problems as high bacteria counts and insufficient protein counts resulted from poor investment by the dairy farmers supplying major milk companies, as the farmers were squeezed by low profit margins under low prices demanded by big dairy companies. Wang also said that the lowering of safety standards for China’s milk industry would only harm the industry. In 2010, less than two years after the poisonous milk scandal of 2008, China relaxed national milk quality standards, allowing higher levels of bacteria in unprocessed milk (China Daily report here). In this cartoon, posted by artist Shang Haichun (商海春) his his QQ.com blog, a smiling businessman labelled “milk industry” clears a hurdle that had been artificially lowered by a tethered brick labelled “lower quality standards.“