China's Zhejiang dairy products tainted with leather protein

A dairy company in east China's Zhejiang Province was found to have added protein powder which was extracted from dirty hydrolysed leather waste in order to enrich the protein content in their dairy products, according to China's quality watchdog.

Leather protein powder is believed to be harder to detect than the industrial chemical melamine which was added to milk powder and other dairy products in China, killing at least six infants and sickening more than 294,000 children last year.

The suspected contaminated dairy products came from the Morning Garden dairy firm based in Lanxi of Jinhua City. It has a daily production capacity of 70 tonnes and annual sales revenue of RMB18.2 million (US$2.67 million).

Local quality inspection authorities tested samples from eight batches of its dairy products on March 18 and found the hydrolysed leather protein in five batches, including semi-finished products.

The authorities again detected the toxic material during another inspection on six batches of dairy products by the firm which were to be sold to three other cities on April 2.

The leather protein powder contains two chemical compounds, potassium dichromate and sodium dichromate which cannot be absorbed by the human digestive system and will accumulate in the body. Children with large amount of the toxicants will suffer from swollen joints and could even die from the poisoning.