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China to improve food supervision after milk powder case

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-09-14 09:17

China is to look at improving its food quality supervision, in the wake of the contaminated milk powder case which has left one baby dead and 432 sick with kidney stones.

Health ministry official Gao Qiang vowed on Saturday that an efficient system should be set up to combine efforts from ministries and bring both the food safety supervision and food quality to "a new level".

The Sanlu Group, a leading Chinese dairy producer, admitted Friday night that it had found some of its baby milk powder products were contaminated with melamine, a chemical raw material. It issued an immediate recall of milk formula made before August 6, saying an expected 700 tonnes of contaminated milk powder was still in circulation.

The local Shijiazhuang government claimed melamine was added to raw milk, which Sanlu bought from dairy farms to produce its powder. The chemical would make the milk look good even though it had been diluted with water.

Chinese police have detained 19 suspects and questioned 78 people in the investigation of the baby milk powder contamination case, Gao said.

"In routine inspections, neither an enterprise nor a quality supervisor will test the amount of an unpredictable medical substance", said Pu Changcheng, deputy director of the Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine.

Pu vowed the authorities would seriously tackle the Sanlu case and study the hidden factors which might lead to serious quality incidents.