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BEIJING : China's cabinet ordered an all-out effort on Saturday to save babies poisoned by contaminated milk powder as more Asian countries moved to stop the food scare spreading overseas.
Four babies have died and more than 6,000 made sick by tainted milk powder, leading China's State Council to order free medical treatment for affected infants, the state Xinhua news agency said, quoting a council statement.
The council also ordered more checks on the dairy industry and vowed to punish those responsible for the scandal, the news agency reported.
An initial probe into the tainted infant formula revealed this week that some popular brands of regular milk, yoghurt and ice-cream had also been contaminated with the industrial chemical melamine.
Melamine is normally used to make plastics but had been added to boost the apparent protein content of milk and milk products.
Several countries have since suspended the import and sale of all Chinese-made milk and milk products.
Singapore did so on Friday, and was followed on Saturday by neighbouring Malaysia. Meanwhile, Myanmar, a close ally of China, announced on Saturday it would seize and destroy imported Chinese baby formula.
And in Japan, a leading food company has decided to recall thousands of buns fearing contamination by tainted Chinese milk.
Fearing further damage to the "made in China" label, China's cabinet said the companies responsible would be made to foot the bill for treating babies who developed kidney problems after drinking the tainted formula.
"Local authorities should rectify the dairy industry so as to bring a fundamental change to the dairy market and products," it added.
The problem first came to light last week in China's state-controlled media, but New Zealand on Saturday said its embassy in Beijing had known of the issue since mid-August.
Some Chinese press reports said the scam had been going on for years, with China's chaotic and corrupt food safety system unable either to detect or prevent it.
President Hu Jintao criticised local officials for lapses in public safety at a Communist Party meeting on Friday, saying there were "painful lessons" to be drawn from a spate of health scares and industrial accidents.
"There have been some serious work and food safety accidents this year in certain places which have caused major harm to life and to the well-being of the masses," the People's Daily, the Communist Party mouthpiece, quoted Hu as saying.
"These incidents show that some officials have lost a sense of principles, of the public interest, of responsibilities, of attention to (people's) suffering."
China has a history of cover-ups involving health and safety scandals.
In one of the worst cases, China initially tried to deny the existence of the 2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, and only owned up after it spilled over into other countries.
Hu has repeatedly said the fight against official corruption is a priority in China, where the lack of a free press or an independent judiciary has allowed graft to flourish. - AFP/ms
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