China inspects dairy farms over baby formula

BEIJING, China (AP) -- China's food safety watchdog sent inspectors to the country's main dairy producing regions on Sunday after at least 432 babies were sickened by tainted milk powder produced by a Chinese company.Officials have defended their response to China's latest product safety disaster, saying that authorities have detained 19 people and are questioning 78 others about how the banned chemical melamine was added to milk sold to Sanlu Group Co., China's biggest milk powder producer.
The government is sending groups of officials to Hebei, Guangdong and Heilongjiang provinces and the Inner Mongolia region to inspect dairy companies, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said.
The teams will also work with local officials in removing all substandard milk powder from the market, it said in a statement on its Web site.
Chinese officials said they were not alerted until Monday, even though Sanlu received complaints as early as March and company tests in August found the milk powder contained melamine, a chemical used in plastics that is banned in food products.
Sanlu ordered a recall Thursday.
At least 432 Chinese babies who were fed Sanlu milk are suffering from kidney stones, Health Minister Gao Qiang said at a news conference Saturday. One baby reportedly diedA New Zealand dairy farmers' group that owns 43 percent of Sanlu Group said Sunday it had urged the company to recall the product as early as six weeks ago.
Fonterra Co-operative Group said it had urged the Sanlu Group board to call for a full recall of the milk powder on Aug. 2, the day the board was notified -- nearly six weeks before the recall action was taken.
Calls to Sanlu's head office in Shijiazhuang, a city southwest of Beijing, rang unanswered Sunday.
"The Sanlu Group should shoulder major responsibility for this," Gao said. He gave no indication of what penalties the Chinese dairy might face but said those responsible would "be dealt with severely."
New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said she instructed her senior ministers to notify Chinese officials in Beijing about the issue three days after she learned Sept. 5 that Fonterra had been trying for weeks to get provincial authorities in China order the recall.
"I think Fonterra, from the advice I have had, has behaved responsibly at all times, but it has been dealing in a political system at a local level in China where the inclination is to cover things up, but I have to say once we blew the whistle in Beijing they moved very fast," she said.
Chinese officials said they did not learn of the issue until last Monday, the day Clark said her ministers were instructed to notify officials in Beijing.
The incident was an embarrassing failure for China's product safety system, which was overhauled in an attempt to restore consumer confidence after a string of recalls and warnings abroad over tainted toothpaste, faulty tires and other goods.
The milk scandal is especially damaging because it involves a major Chinese food company and the government expects such companies to act as industry role models for safety and quality.Gao said the melamine may have been added to milk to fool quality tests after water was added to fraudulently increase its volume. Melamine is rich in nitrogen, and standard tests for protein in food ingredients measure nitrogen levels.
The officials said some tainted powder was exported to Taiwan but none was sent to other foreign markets