Two years after a national health scare over melamine-tainted milk products rocked China's dairy industry and called food safety into question, inspectors in western China's Qinghai province have seized 76 tonnes of dairy ingredients laced with the same industrial chemical, according to reports on Friday (Jul 9).

 

The seizure appeared to involve products that had escaped a nationwide recall of dairy foods after the 2008 scandal, which killed at least six children and sickened 294,000 others.

 

Inspectors in Gansu Province first discovered contaminated samples of milk powder brought to them for testing by a worker at the Dongyuan Dairy Factory in adjacent Qinghai Province. Qinghai officials later found 64 tonnes of raw dairy products and 12 tonnes of finished goods were tainted with melamine, some at up to 559 times the legal maximum.

 

Both the factory owner, 54-year-old Liu Zhanfeng, and the production manager Wang Haifeng, 37, were taken into police custody. Officials said most of the contaminated material was destined for Zhejiang Province, near Shanghai.

 

Melamine, which is used in concrete, fertiliser and plastic, mimics protein in certain food-quality tests, and Chinese manufacturers had added the chemical to ingredients used in infant formula, chocolate, pet and animal feeds and other products to make them appear more nutritious. When eaten in sufficient quantity, however, melamine can cause permanent kidney damage.

 

In January, inspectors in southern China's Guizhou Province pulled dairy products out of local stores after discovering melamine in products shipped there from Shanghai and three other provinces. Officials in Jilin province, in northeastern China, had confiscated more than 1,000 packages of milk powder after finding tainted products in a market on June 22. Officials have since begun inspecting dairy plants across the region.

 

In all the recent cases, the contaminated products appear to be leftovers from the 2008 recall. Inspections at that time found excessive melamine in the products of 22 dairy companies, or one in five dairy manufacturers.

 

Government officials here vowed to crack down on food-safety violations in the wake of the 2007 and 2008 melamine incidents, which damaged the reputation of Chinese food exports worldwide. The government ordered sweeping changes in food inspection last year, writing new rules and placing the existing patchwork of food regulatory bodies under a single authority, the National Ministry of Health.

 

But food safety procedures still need improvement, and corrupt manufacturers and growers still use bribery and corruption to escape scrutiny.

 

"The Chinese government has enormously and effectively responded with new laws and new regulations, and tries to implement this as soon as it can," said Rio Praaning Prawira Adiningrat, secretary general of the Public Advice International Foundation.