A Chinese court handed down a two-and-a-half year jail sentence to a man who organised a website for parents of children who became ill from drinking tainted milk after his own son became sick. The court found Zhao Lianhai guilty of "inciting social disorder" Zhao founded "Kidney Stone Babies" to provide information and resources for parents after about 300,000 Chinese infants were made ill, with some 50,000 hospitalised, in 2008 after drinking milk formula deliberately tainted with melamine. At least six babies died. Police formally arrested Zhao last December, charging him with the crime of picking quarrels and provoking trouble. After an initial cover-up during the Olympic Games in Beijing, China jailed or executed a handful of farmers, milk dealers and executives at Sanlu, the dairy firm that sold the tainted milk, but never announced the sentences for government officials detained after the scandal. Farmers and dealers had put melamine, an ingredient in plastics and fertiliser, in poor quality milk to show higher protein levels in tests. Sanlu executives said they reported the problem to the government in August 2008, shortly before the Olympic Games began, but China took no public action until September, when Sanlu's partner, dairy cooperative Fonterra, took the matter up with the New Zealand government. China set up a compensation fund for children whose health had been seriously damaged, but the children of many of the parents who allied with Zhao were not eligible for compensation.