CHINA:SANLU GROUP, the Chinese dairy whose tainted baby milk triggered the food safety crisis that has made 53,000 children sick, failed to report complaints about the product for months, state media said yesterday.
Sanlu began receiving complaints that children had been made sick by drinking Sanlu milk powder last December, the Xinhua news agency reported, citing a cabinet investigation.
Communist Party officials in the north Chinese city of Shijiazhuang, where Sanlu is based, delayed referring the matter to higher authorities for more than a month after they finally were told of it in early August.
The first reports that the milk had been tainted with melamine, a chemical used for making plastics and tanning leather among other uses, appeared in state media earlier this month.
Sanlu Group, which is 43 per cent owned by New Zealand's Fronterra Group, the world's biggest dairy company, did not begin testing its milk until June and failed to report the matter to local authorities until August 2nd, the Xinhua report noted.
"They violated rules on reporting major incidents involving food safety," Xinhua said, in the first official admission that there had been deliberate delays in reporting the risks.
The discovery came shortly before the Olympics in Beijing and there is speculation officials were worried about the impact of a health scare so soon before the Games.
More than 53,000 children were made sick by the products, and so far four children have died, and 12,892 children remained hospitalised with kidney problems, 104 of them in serious condition.
Eighteen people have been arrested so far in the case, including the sacked head of Sanlu Group, and dozens have been detained for questioning, according to state media.
China's product-safety watchdog chief, Li Changjiang has been sacked, as well as Wu Xianguo, the top Communist official of Shijiazhuang. The city's mayor and several other government officials were fired earlier.
In Hong Kong a second child has been reported ill with a kidney stone after drinking contaminated Chinese dairy products. The four-year-old boy was in a stable condition, the Hong Kong Centre for Health Protection said.
Elsewhere, the Philippines ordered an immediate ban on the import and sale of Chinese dairy products, while Bangladesh, Brunei, Burundi, Japan, Gabon, Malaysia, Burma, Singapore, Taiwan, Tanzania and Vietnam have taken steps to ban or restrict Chinese milk products.
China has been hit by a wave of scandals in recent years over dangerous products including food, drugs and toys, which has hit the "Made in China" label hard. Melamine was also found in Chinese-made pet food which killed thousands of cats and dogs last year.