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BEIJING: China on Wednesday pulled all dairy products more than a month old from shops across the country in one of the biggest steps taken by authorities to end a deadly scandal over contaminated milk.
All dairy products made before September 14 will be tested for a chemical blamed for killing four babies and leaving more than 53,000 others sick, according to a notice posted on the product-safety watchdog's website.
"All supermarkets, shops, and all city, town and village-level vendors will urgently remove and seal up all milk powder and liquid milk made before September 14, pending further testing," said the notice.
The announcement by the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine gave no reason for the blanket removal of the goods or why the order was not issued when the scandal first broke last month.
The notice, posted this week and publicised in the state press on Wednesday, said only it was part of "inspections to sort out the dairy market".
However, it appeared to indicate fears that contamination of Chinese milk products with the industrial chemical melamine was more widespread than originally thought.
China had said earlier that the products of at least 22 milk companies, or nearly 12 percent of products tested, had been found to contain melamine.
However, it has repeatedly stressed that many other dairy products made before September 14 had been given the all-clear, while all others after that date were safe.
Those recalled products that passed tests by local authorities would be allowed back on shelves with a special label declaring them safe, while those with excess melamine would not, according to the notice.
Indicating the sensitivity of the issue, staff at the product safety agency declined to comment on the mass recall when contacted by AFP, as did two major Chinese supermarket chains.
Normally used to make plastics, melamine has been found in fresh milk, powders, yoghurt and other goods containing Chinese milk.
In perhaps the biggest in a string of Chinese product safety scares in recent years, the melamine was apparently mixed into watered-down milk to give it the impression of having higher protein content.
The babies who died suffered from kidney failure induced by taking in the melamine through contaminated milk powder. Many of the thousands of children who fell ill suffered from kidney stones and vomiting.
Figures from China's Ministry of Health, according to a Xinhua report, said 5,824 children are still receiving hospital treatment for kidney diseases.
The figure was down to almost half that reported a week ago but six of those who remain under the care of medical staff are in serious condition, a ministry statement said, according to Xinhua.
The number of children affected could be much higher than the 53,000 reported by the government, however, as health ministry officials said last week they had updated numbers but refused to make them public.
Countries around the world have issued recalls and bans of Chinese-made dairy products after high melamine levels were detected in exported goods.
In yet another development on Wednesday to raise concerns over the "Made In China" brand, Chinese frozen beans sold in Japan were found to contain 34,500 times the legal level of pesticides.
Officials there said Japan's government had ordered retailers to pull the frozen beans produced by China's Yantai Beihai Foodstuff off shelves after a woman ate them and fell ill.
An official at Yantai Beihai Foodstuff told AFP it was investigating the issue, but did not believe it was to blame. - AFP/de
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