China sets melamine limits
2008-10-08 10:19
Beijing - China announced on Wednesday limits for how much melamine its dairy products can contain, seeking to curb the use of the chemical which has killed four children and sickened 53 000.
The maximum amount of melamine allowed in baby formula is one milligram per kilogram, said Wang Xuening, deputy director general of the health ministry's health supervision bureau.
For liquid milk and other dairy products the limit is 2.5 milligrams per kilogram, he told a briefing in Beijing.
"Melamine is not a food raw material, and it's also not a food additive. We prohibit people adding it to food items. Cases where melamine has been added to food will be investigated according to law," he said.
Melamine is an industrial chemical used for producing plastic, but when added to milk, it makes it look richer in protein than it really is.
Officials at the briefing did not say directly how the new legally allowed amount of melamine may come to be in the dairy products.
But Chen Junshi, a senior researcher at the National Institute for Nutrition and Food Safety, pointed out that the chemical was often used in packaging used for food products.
A World Health Organisation expert also said this week that melamine could be found in food due to accidental contamination through product packaging or through contact with certain surfaces during the manufacturing process.
Some fertilisers, which are rarely used, also contain melamine, which could then be the source of traces found in food products, WHO expert Peter Ben Embarek told AFP in Geneva this week.
He said that many parts of the world, including the European Union, Hong Kong and New Zealand, set limits for melamine in food products only very recently.
This is because the chemical was not considered a substance found in food before the milk scandal broke out in China.
"There are billions of chemical products that normally should not be found in food - it is therefore impossible to fix a limit for all the chemicals," Embarek said.