China stuggles with fallout from tainted milk scandal
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 yesterday.
Meanwhile, the agriculture ministry said on its website 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 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.
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