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Six more arrested in Chinese milk probe

A Chinese trade enforcement officer checks expiry dates on boxes of milk at a shop in Tongzi, Guizhou Province, China, on Tuesday. PHOTO: AFP

China has arrested six more people for their role in supplying contaminated milk to the country’s dairy companies, while the health ministry said more than 3,600 Chinese children remain hospitalized after consuming compromised products.

The six suspects, who worked in the major dairy-producing region of Inner Mongolia, either sold melamine to milk suppliers or added the industrial chemical to milk themselves, Xinhua News Agency said on Thursday.

Melamine, used in plastics and fertilizer, can cause kidney stones and lead to kidney failure in larger doses. A total of 3,654 children remain sick, with three in serious condition, the Ministry of Health said in a notice on its Web site late on Wednesday.

Authorities say middlemen apparently added melamine to milk they collected from farmers to sell to large dairy companies. The suppliers are accused of watering down the milk and then adding the nitrogen-rich chemical to make the milk seem higher in protein when tested. Protein tests often simply measure nitrogen levels.

As of Wednesday, a total of 46,717 children had been treated and discharged from hospitals, the health ministry said. Milk powder contaminated with melamine has been blamed for the deaths of four infants.

There have not been any more reports of deaths, the ministry said, adding that all the deaths occurred between May and August, which was before the public knew milk products were tainted.

Xinhua said the government in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia’s capital, requested that police launch an investigation into the sources of milk for China’s largest dairy companies, Yili Industrial Group and Mengniu Dairy Group Co — both of which are headquartered in the region.

Three of the suspects, who operated milk collecting stations, put additives containing melamine bought from two other suspects into their milk so it could pass quality testing, Xinhua said. The report said the sixth suspect sold a range of man-made additives containing melamine.

The milk collection stations sold milk to Mengniu, it said.

Authorities had previously arrested 36 people in northern China’s Hebei Province, which is the home of Sanlu Group Co, the company at the center of the crisis.
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