China ordered widespread checks on dairy products and a recall of tainted items as a milk scandal that began with powdered baby formula spread to liquid milk and sparked an outcry from China’s trading partners.
The State Council, or Cabinet, also called on medical authorities to give free examinations and treatment to infants who fell ill after drinking milk contaminated with potentially deadly melamine, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
The council vowed to punish enterprises and government leaders responsible for the scandal.
”Local authorities should rectify the dairy industry so as to bring a fundamental change to the dairy market and products,” Xinhua quoted the council as saying.
Panicked parents have crowded hospitals and demanded redress since officials and the Sanlu Group, China’s biggest maker of infant milk powder, said last week that babies developed kidney stones and complications after drinking milk made from powder contaminated with melamine, a compound used in making plastics.
At the latest count, 6 244 children have become ill. Four have died and 158 are suffering acute kidney failure.
A government food quality watchdog in China has said nearly 10% of milk and drinking yoghurt samples from three major dairy companies contained melamine.
The nitrogen-rich compound can be added to watered-down milk to get past quality inspections, which check for nitrogen to measure protein levels.
Singapore banned all dairy imports from China on Friday while the European Union demanded an accounting of what had gone wrong.
On Thursday, Hong Kong recalled dairy products of one Chinese company after authorities found eight of its 30 products, including ice-cream and yoghurt ice bars, contained melamine.
Almost one-10th of liquid milk and yoghurt batches from China Mengniu Dairy and Inner Mongolia Yili Industrial Group contained melamine, which is banned in food. The substance was also found in several samples of milk from the Bright dairy group.
Starbucks Corp said its 300-plus cafés in mainland China had pulled milk supplied by Mengniu. Starbucks said no employees or customers had fallen ill from the milk.
Quality officials said most Chinese milk was safe, trying to shore up public trust already shaken by a litany of food scares involving eggs, pork and seafood in recent years.
The Chinese quality watchdog also said melamine-tainted milk would not make adults sick unless they drank more than two litres a day.
The General Administration of Quality Supervision Inspection and Quarantine said 3 215,1 tonnes of milk powder had been pulled from shelves or recalled across the country as of Friday morning. – Reuters