Mainland orders Sanlu to end tainted milk powder sales in Taiwan
24/9/2008 17:30
China's State Council, or Cabinet, today said it had ordered mainland
dairy giant Sanlu to immediately stop sales of powdered milk in Taiwan after
announcing the group had sold products contaminated with melamine to the
island.
State Council spokesman Li Weiyi said 25 tons of powdered milk sold
by Hebei-based Sanlu to Taiwan in June were found contaminated with
melamine.
"The Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council informed the Taiwan
authorities immediately after the General Administration of Quality Supervision,
Inspection and Quarantine reported the case, and has ordered Sanlu Companies to
ask their Taiwan partners to stop selling the contaminated milk powder," said Li
at a press conference in Beijing.
"We have also informed Taiwan authorities
about the other 21 mainland diary companies whose products were found
contaminated with melamine," said Li. However, those companies had sold no
products to Taiwan.
"We feel deeply sorry for the hazards Sanlu infant
formula might have brought to Taiwan consumers," said Li.
He said the Taiwan
Affairs Office was putting food safety as one of the topics for the second round
of talks between the mainland's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan
Strait (ARATS) and Taiwan's Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF).
Regarding the
possible contamination of melamine in artificial coffee creamer products sold to
Taiwan, Li said that so far, there was no evidence of such contamination.
He
said Shandong provincial quality inspection bureau had checked the creamer
produced by Qingdao-based Shandong Duqing Company, which was reported by some
Taiwan media as selling tainted products to Taiwan, and did not find evidence of
melamine contamination.
The company sold 70 tons of creamer products to
Taiwan in November last year, the main ingredient of which was glucose syrup,
with only 1 to 2 percent of protein, Li said.
The protein level was not among
the criteria for judging the product's quality, so there was no reason for the
company to add melamine, he said.
Li said the tainted milk was a major food
safety incident, and both the mainland and Taiwan authorities were making
efforts to minimize its negative impact on the cross-Strait relationship.
"We
are co-operating with the SEF and Taiwan authorities to find where the tainted
milk was sold and to make a thorough investigation into the whole incident," he
said.
He said that Taiwan consumers who were affected by the tainted Sanlu
milk could seek compensation through the SEF and the ARATS. The mainland
authorities would organize expert committees to deal with those cases.
Li
said the cross-Strait joint maritime search and rescue exercise, which was
scheduled this week in Xiamen, was postponed till October due to the impact of
Typhoon Hagupit.
He said the incident of tainted milk would not affect the
general trend of the expanding cross-Strait economic exchanges and
collaborations. To maintain the peaceful development of the relationship would
still be the common wish and of the fundamental interest of the people on both
sides.
Xinhua
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