China struggles with fall-out from tainted milk scandal
2008-10-05

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BEIJING (AFP) - China was on Sunday struggling to contain the fall-out from the tainted milk scandal, announcing a new survey of melamine-free dairy products and promising to subsidise farmers hit by the scare.

The latest test of 609 batches of liquid milk from 27 cities across China detected no melamine, the industrial chemical at the centre of the dairy scare, the Beijing Morning Post reported.

Altogether 75 brands were sampled for the test, including prominent ones such as Yili, Mengniu and Bright Dairy, the paper said, citing China's top product quality watchdog, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine.

It was the sixth test in China since the milk scare broke out last month.

Melamine, which has been detected in a range of China-made milk products, is blamed for the deaths of four Chinese children and for sickening 53,000.

The chemical is used to produce plastic but when mixed with watered-down milk it makes it appear richer in protein than it actually is.

Suspicions about exactly where in the supply chain the melamine was added have centred on milk-collecting stations, which are scattered across the countryside in their thousands.

They are relatively new players in the dairy industry and therefore their business of buying milk from individual farmers, has so far been subject to very little official supervision.

However, since the scandal erupted, the agriculture ministry has dispatched 152,000 officials to investigate nearly 19,000 milk-collecting stations, the People's Daily reported Sunday.

In north China's Hebei province, officials recalled 451 tonnes of milk powder from Sanlu Group, the company whose tainted baby formula triggered the crisis, and destroyed 300 tonnes, the Beijing Evening News said Sunday.

Meanwhile, the agriculture ministry said on its website late Saturday it was supervising a campaign to subsidise dairy farmers badly hit by the crisis.

Farmers had been dumping raw milk as daily reports of the toxic contents of some dairy products had caused demand to shrink rapidly, the ministry said in a statement.

"On the one hand we must crack down on illegal behaviour but on the other hand we must protect the interests of the dairy sector," said the statement.

"We must do our best to minimise the dumping of milk and we must resolutely prevent the killing of cows," it said.

The ministry said it had achieved some success in restoring confidence, citing 14 local governments that had come up with policies to stabilise the dairy industry.

It mentioned Hebei province, which had earmarked 316 million yuan (46 million dollars) as subsidies, paying farmers 200 yuan for each cow.

While China was seeking to repair the damage at home, the wave of recalls and warnings rolled on abroad.

In neighbouring Myanmar, authorities urged people not to consume Chinese milk and dairy products, the state-controlled newspaper New Light of Myanmar reported Sunday.

The announcement came after the country's food and drug watchdog destroyed 16 tonnes of imported Chinese baby formula tainted with melamine, it said.

Guyana on Saturday became the second Caribbean Community member, after Surinam, to pull Chinese dairy products off the market.

Also on Saturday, South Korea ordered Mars and Nestle to pull three products after melamine was detected in snacks made in China by the multinationals.

A fourth Chinese milk product was withdrawn from sale in Australia after tests revealed it was tainted with melamine, Food Standards Australia New Zealand said in a statement.

Australia has already banned China's creamy White Rabbit chocolates, and a Japanese importer has also begun recalling another brand of Chinese chocolate suspected of being contaminated.

The European Union recently banned all imports on Chinese milk-related products for children such as biscuits and chocolate on top of a long-standing embargo on Chinese dairy products like milk and yoghurt.