TING.YAN@SCMP.COM
UPDATED : Friday, 08 April, 2016, 1:17pm
A Chinese man selects milk powder at a supermarket in Beijing. Photo: AFP
China’s food safety watchdog has backtracked on its earlier statement endorsing the safety of fake brand-name baby milk powder, saying it did so to hold back public panic.
Shanghai police announced a fortnight ago that they had arrested six people for producing and selling 17,000 cans of counterfeit infant formula that were distributed to several provinces across China.
The syndicate sold the milk powder under “multiple” brands, but only two names – international brand Abbott and China’s leading Beingmate – were released.
Police said the suspects produced the milk powder using cheap infant formula and those with defective packaging.
But on Monday, after the news broke, the China Food and Drug Administration said the products seized by police had passed its quality tests and that they met the national standard.
The fake brand-name formula did not pose a safety hazard, the regulator said.
After its initial statement drew a massive public outcry, however, the watchdog said on Wednesday that its response had been meant to remind consumers not to panic if they had bought the products.
Confidence in infant formula made and sold in China has never recovered from the string of food safety scares over the years.
The most serious case was exposed in 2008 when 300,000 babies across the country were found with kidney damage after having consumed melamine-tainted milk powder. Six babies died.
More recently, a mother and daughter in Shandong province were arrested for running a massive network that had distributed expired or improperly stored vaccines across China for five years. The scandal involved some 570 million yuan worth of vaccines.
Since the fake-formula scandal broke, sales of Abbott and Beingmate milk products had dropped significantly in supermarkets in Chengdu, Sichuan province, according to Sichuan Daily
http://m.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/1934641/chinas-baby-milk-powder-scandal-watchdog-admits
