China says milk was tainted with nitrite intentionally

Almaty. April 11. Kazakhstan Today - Three children have died and 35 people have become ill from drinking nitrite-tainted milk in China's northwestern Gansu province, according to Xinhua news agency, Kazakhstan Today reports.

Intentional poisoning was behind the tainted milk that killed three children and caused 36 others to become ill in China's north-western Gansu province last week, state media reported Sunday night, adding to the woes of the country's maligned dairy industry, Reuters reported.

Investigators found that nitrite, an industrial salt that can be deadly, was added to fresh milk from two dairies last week in Gansu province in order to harm people, the China Daily newspaper reported. A suspect in Pingliang, where the poisoning took place, has been taken into custody, The Guardian said.

The three children who died were all under two, with the youngest 36 days old, the China Daily said. An earlier report in the Pingliang News, a local government-run paper, said 36 other people, mostly children, became ill in the incident.

Nitrate, which is used to cure meat, has no use as a milk additive, the official China Daily newspaper cited a health bureau official as saying, Reuters informed.

The three children who died after consuming the tainted milk were all under two years old. As of Sunday, 17 of the victims remained hospitalised but were in stable condition.

China's food sector has suffered from frequent poisonings and toxin scandals, and the fast-growing but fragmented dairy sector has been at the heart of those worries.

Earlier this year, Chinese quality authorities sought to calm renewed public alarm after reports that some manufacturers had illegally added a leather protein powder to dairy products to cheat protein-content checks.

In 2008, at least six children died and nearly 300,000 became ill from powdered milk laced with melamine, an industrial chemical added to low quality or diluted milk to fool inspectors by giving misleadingly high readings for protein levels.

Photo: The Guardian

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