China seizes more dairy items tainted with chemical that killed 6 babies, sickened thousands

China finds more milk items tainted with melamine

BEIJING — Chinese authorities have found dairy products in at least three provinces tainted with an industrial chemical that killed six babies and sickened hundreds of thousands more in 2008, state media said Friday.

The discovery suggests toxic milk remains a lingering danger in China despite a crackdown two years ago that saw dozens arrested and two people, a dairy farmer and a milk salesmen, executed.

Some of the recently found milk was melamine-tainted powder that state media said was likely stockpiled instead of destroyed two years ago.

Melamine is added to watered-down milk to make it appear rich in protein in quality tests that measure nitrogen, found in both the melamine and protein. Health problems from the chemical include kidney stones and kidney damage.

In June, authorities found 64 tons of raw materials for making milk powder and 12 tons of finished powder tainted with melamine at a factory in the far western province of Qinghai, the official Xinhua News Agency said. In a separate case, they said they seized about 1,000 packets of tainted milk powder in the northeastern province of Jilin.

Xinhua said the owner and a production manager from Dongyuan Dairy Factory in Qinghai have been detained after tests showed some of their products had 500 times the legal limit for melamine.

The contamination was initially discovered because Dongyuan sent samples of the powder, which they had purchased from Hebei province, to a lab for testing so they could figure out how much to dilute it before selling it, Xinhua said, citing police.

The report said some of the material was believed to be old powder that should have been destroyed in 2008 amid a crackdown on tainted milk.

Xinhua said Dongyuan had already sold some of the tainted goods to businesses in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces — a supply chain that suggests melamine-tainted milk products could still be available in many parts of the country.

In Zhejiang, about three tons of Dongyuan milk powder was used to make ice cream and other products, but most of it was still being processed and had not entered the market, Xinhua quoted a provincial food safety official as saying.

The Xinhua report didn’t say whether there were any reports of people getting sick from the products.

The phone at the Dongyuan factory rang unanswered Friday.

China’s Administration of Quality Supervision Inspection and Quarantine did not immediately respond to a faxed request for comment.

China ordered tens of thousands of tainted milk products burned or buried after more than 300,000 children were sickened and at least six died from the contamination. But, crucially, the government did not carry out the eradication itself.

In January, authorities announced toxic dairy products had been found in Shanghai and the provinces of Shaanxi, Shandong, Liaoning and Hebei, prompting a 10-day emergency crackdown with inspection teams fanning out to 16 provinces.

Zhang Zhongjun, a representative for the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization in Beijing, said the latest discovery highlights China’s ongoing struggle to step up food safety.

“We think the situation is improving but there are still some problems,” Zhang said. He said many manufacturers are small-scale operations with little food safety awareness and numerous agencies handle enforcement, creating confusion that lets some offenders slip through the cracks.

____

Associated Press researcher Zhao Liang contributed to this report.