China tainted food scandal expands

by Outspoken on Fri Sep 26, 2008 7:10 am

China tainted food scandal expands
By ANITA CHANG
Associated Press Writer

BEIJING - The Hong Kong government says it has found traces of melamine in baby cereals and crackers made in China in an expanding scandal over Chinese milk and other food products tainted with the industrial chemical.

In China, authorities said Friday that a Taiwanese mother and three young children with kidney stones may have been poisoned by Chinese milk products tainted with melamine, and two Japanese confectioners' products were also found to be contaminated.

Hong Kong's government said the contaminated baby vegetable formula cereal are made by Heinz. It also says melamine was found in the steamed potato wasabi crackers produced by Silang House. Both were made in China, it said.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE.
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BEIJING (AP) — A Taiwanese mother and three young children with kidney stones may have been poisoned by tainted Chinese milk products, and two Japanese confectioners' products were found to be contaminated, authorities said Friday, a day after the European Union banned imports of baby food containing Chinese milk.

Liu Yi-lien, health chief of the Ilan County government in eastern Taiwan, says the two 3-year-old girls and a one-year-old boy all have been traveling frequently between Taiwan and China with their parents. One of the children's mothers also has kidney stones.

If a link is established between these kidney problems and melamine-tainted milk, they would be the first such cases diagnosed outside of China or its territories of Hong Kong and Macau since the contaminated milk scandal erupted this month.

However, the infants may have been consuming formula purchased in China, not Taiwan.

Four children in China have died from consuming the products contaminated with the industrial chemical melamine and more than 50,000 have been sickened.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080926/ap_on_re_as/as_china_tainted_milk;_ylt=AkUzirVyPV68Nv5VbnJu.YKs0NUE