(AFP) – Oct 14, 2008

BEIJING (AFP) — China has urgently ordered all dairy products more than a month old to be pulled from shop shelves nationwide in its latest step to end a scandal over contaminated milk, state press reported Wednesday.

All dairy products made before September 14 will have to be tested for the industrial chemical melamine that has been responsible for killing four babies and leaving more than 53,000 others sick, Xinhua news agency said.

It was citing an "urgent notice" jointly issued by six central government departments, although there was no explanation as to why the dairy products were not immediately recalled when the scandal broke last month.

The notice was not published on the websites of those government departments, which included the health ministry, on Wednesday.

According to Xinhua, the notice said all products that passed the tests being conducted by local authorities would be allowed to go back on sale with a special label declaring them safe from melamine.

Those that were found to contain excess levels of melamine would be permanently recalled.

September 14 was set as the benchmark date as that was when Sanlu, one of the nation's biggest dairy producers, admitted to having melamine in its baby milk powder, Xinhua reported.

After that, the government implemented nationwide checks throughout its dairy industry in an effort to ensure milk was melamine free.

Melamine, a chemical normally used to make plastics, has been found in fresh milk, powders and yogurt from more than 20 Chinese dairy producers, pushing concerns over the safety of made-in-China products to an all-time high.

The melamine was apparently mixed into watered-down or weak milk to give it the impression of having higher protein content.

The scandal has led to recalls and bans of Chinese-made dairy products around the world.

The company at the centre of China's latest food exports alarm said Wednesday it was investigating how pesticides were detected in frozen beans sold in Japan, but it believed it was not at fault.

Japanese authorities ordered retailers to pull the beans produced by Chinese firm Yantai Beihai Foodstuff off the nation's shelves after a woman ate some that had 34,500 times the legal limit of pesticide and promptly fell ill.

An official with Yantai, based in eastern China's Shandong province, confirmed Chinese authorities were investigating the company but said the firm believed it was not responsible.

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