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6th October, 2008
BEIJING: China struggled Sunday to contain the fall-out from the tainted milk scandal, announcing a new survey of dairy products that found no melamine and promising to subsidise farmers hit by the scare.
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 the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine.
It was the sixth test in China since the milk scare broke out last month, according to the administration, the nation’s top product quality watchdog.
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 where in the supply system the melamine was added have centred on milk-collecting stations, which are scattered across the countryside in the thousands.
They are relatively new players in the dairy industry and therefore their business, buying milk from individual farmers, has so far been under very limited official supervision.
However, since the scandal erupted the agriculture ministry has dispatched 152,000 officials and investigated nearly 19,000 milk-collecting stations, the People’s Daily reported Sunday.
Meanwhile, the agriculture ministry said on its website late Saturday that 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 precipitously, the ministry said in a statement.
“On the one hand we must crack down on illegal behaviour, but on the other hand we must protect the interests of the dairy sector,” said the statement.
“We must do our best to minimise the dumping of milk and we must resolutely prevent the killing of cows,” it said.
The ministry said it had achieved some success in restoring confidence, citing 14 local governments that had come up with policies to stabilise the dairy industry.
It mentioned the northern province of Hebei, which had earmarked 316 million yuan (46 million dollars) as subsidies, paying farmers 200 yuan for each cow.
While China was seeking to repair the damage at home, the wave of recalls rolled on abroad.-AFP
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