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Beijing orders sweeping dairy product tests

China sought to reassure Taiwanese consumers that its dairy products were safe yesterday, a day after authorities confirmed that a toddler in Hong Kong developed kidney stones from consuming milk and cookies laced with melamine. Beijing has ordered that all milk products more than a month old be pulled for testing.

Spokesman Yang Yi (楊毅) of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said at a news conference in Beijing that authorities were very concerned about the scandal, in which contaminated infant formula killed four babies and sickened tens of thousands of children nationwide.

“We have taken a serious approach,” Yang said. “China has launched a thorough investigation into this issue to help restore the trust of Taiwanese consumers.”

After China’s melamine scandal broke last month, Taiwanese authorities launched a sweeping inspection of milk powders and related food items. More than 160 products containing Chinese milk and vegetable-based proteins have been removed from stores.

Taiwanese and Chinese food safety authorities have agreed to set up a hot line to inform each other of food safety emergencies.

China has ordered all milk products more than a month old pulled from store shelves for emergency testing, the largest blanket product withdrawal since the scandal first came to light.

All milk powder and liquid milk produced before Sept. 14 must be tested by manufacturers nationwide, China’s chief quality watchdog said in an announcement reported by the Xinhua news agency on Tuesday and posted on its Web site yesterday.

“Regardless of the brand or the batch, they must be taken off shelves. Their sale must be stopped,” the order from the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said.

Products will be sold again only after they pass quality tests and are labeled as saying they do not exceed limits for melamine, the safety watchdog said.

It was not clear why the cutoff date for the latest notice was Sept. 14, but China launched a countrywide inspection of dairy-producing facilities focusing on milk collecting centers on Sept. 15.

In Vietnam, state-controlled media said yesterday the Health Ministry has banned all products for human consumption that are contaminated with melamine.

Deputy Health Minister Cao Minh Quang also told the Labor newspaper that importers must send back any tainted imported products to the country of origin.

Chinese authorities have blamed dairy suppliers for the food safety scandal that began last month, saying they added melamine to watered-down milk to fool quality control tests and make the product appear rich in protein.

Melamine can cause kidney stones as the body tries to eliminate it and, in extreme cases, lead to life-threatening kidney failure.

Infants and toddlers are particularly susceptible.

Hong Kong’s government said on Tuesday that a two-year-old boy developed two kidney stones after consuming melamine-laced milk and cookies.

Government spokesman Alex Cheng said the boy had been drinking three packs of milk produced by Chinese dairy Yili Industrial Group Co each week for the past two years. He also ate about five packs per week of chocolate-filled Koala cookies, made by Tokyo-based snack maker Lotte Group.

Also See: SEF protests beating of two Taiwanese in China and demands compensation


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