British supermarket withdraws Chinese sweets over milk fears
Posted: 25 September 2008 0117 hrs

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LONDON: Britain's biggest retailer Tesco said on Wednesday it had taken certain Chinese sweets off its shelves due to fears over the contaminated milk product scandal.

Only a small number of stores were affected, notably in areas with large Chinese immigrant communities, said the supermarket, one of the first in Europe to take action over the scare.

"As a precautionary measure we have withdrawn White Rabbit Candies from the very small number of UK stores that sell them as part of our ethnic range," Tesco said in a statement.

A spokeswoman for the supermarket giant told AFP that the decision was taken Tuesday and the products were removed from the shelves immediately.

Four children have died and some 53,000 children have become sick in China after consuming milk products tainted with melamine, a product normally used to make plastics.

The spokeswoman said the world's third-biggest retailer did not know whether the sweets contained melamine, while only a very small number of stores were affected.

"They were only available as part of our ethnic range, which is something that's not in all our stores. It's only larger stores in certain areas where there's a demand for it," she said.

"It would only have been stocked in places that have a large Chinese population.

"It's not a huge amount of stock because it wasn't in a number of stores and it's not a top selling product."

Asked whether Tesco thought the sweets might contain melamine, she said: "That we don't know, which is why we have taken them off. They are not a Tesco product so it's not really for us to comment.

"Because there have been some concerns, we voluntarily made that decision."

The scandal has prompted a host of nations to ban, or at least scrutinise, Chinese dairy imports.

The sweets were removed from sale in Australia on Wednesday.

In Europe, the EU Commission on Monday asked the European Food Safety Authority to "urgently assess possible public health risks" of China's tainted milk scandal to consumers.

On Tuesday an Italian minister said Rome has stepped up checks on Chinese imports in the face of the baby milk crisis. - AFP/de