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August 21, 2010

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Melamine's comeback: 47 held for lacing milk

Chinese police have officially arrested or detained 47 suspects and authorities seized more than 200 tons of melamine-laced dairy products that were produced with leftovers from the nationwide melamine scandal of 2008.

The food safety watchdog announced last night that the police investigation into a series of new melamine cases in Qinghai, Hebei, Shanxi and Jilin provinces and Tianjin City has been wrapped up and that prosecutors will step in and proceed with these cases.

Three officials with Qinghai Province's Dongyuan Dairy Factory and three dealers who sold the leftover tainted powdered milk to the factory were arrested, the Xinhua news agency reported.

The authority said the dealers Zhou Zhonglin, Sun Xuefeng, and Dai Wenming sold 48 tons of leftover tainted milk power to the Dongyuan factory.

The heads of the factory Liu Zhanfeng, Liu Xiping and Wang Haifeng instructed workers to mix the powder with their products, it said.

The factory has been ordered shuttered.

China burned or buried tens of thousands of tainted milk products in the melamine scandal in 2008. The 48 tons of powder Dongyuan bought could be traced back to Hebei Province, the source of the toxic baby-formula scandal that brought down the state-owned dairy giant Sanlu Group in 2008.

Police have seized 124 tons of dairy products in Dongyuan's storehouse and have recalled the products from Shanghai and the provinces of Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Hunan, Henan, and Liaoning.

The latest melamine-tainted milk powder was first detected in Gansu Province.

Tests of samples of the milk powder showed up to 500 times the maximum allowable level of the chemical melamine, the Gansu provincial food safety watchdog has said.

The milk was then traced back to Dongyuan.

The food safety authority started a nationwide clean-up campaign into the dairy business and found another four instances of tainted-milk products. Police detained 41 people responsible and seized 103 tons of tainted milk powder.

Melamine is added to watered-down milk to make it appear rich in protein in quality tests that measure nitrogen, which is found in both melamine and protein.

The chemical can cause kidney stones and kidney damage. It killed at least six babies and sickened thousands in the 2008 scandal.




 

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