China official says milk scandal "under control"

By Ben Blanchard

BEIJING (Reuters) - China, seeking to assure the world its products are safe, said on Wednesday a tainted milk scandal had been brought under control.

And in New York, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao told an audience that his government would seize the crisis as an opportunity to overhaul safety controls.

"There is no problem," Xiang Yuzhang, the national quality watchdog's chief inspection official, told reporters in Beijing.

"It has been brought under control, more or less. There are no more problems in the market. As far as I know, there will be no more bad news."

But China could face an uphill struggle to convince its own people and those abroad that it has the situation in hand. The government has said the Sanlu Group, the company at the center of the scandal, knew for months there was a problem with its milk powder before reporting it.

Australia on Wednesday issued fresh warnings for China and nearby nations in the wake of the scandal, advising its citizens overseas to avoid all Chinese-made milk products, unless companies have confirmed their goods are free from contamination.

Beijing is battling public alarm and international dismay after close to 13,000 Chinese children crowded hospitals, ill from infant milk formula tainted with melamine, a cheap industrial chemical that can be used to cheat quality checks.

Nitrogen-rich melamine can be added to watered-down milk to fool quality checks, which often use nitrogen levels to measure the amount of protein in milk. The chemical is used in making plastics.

China has a bad record of glossing over or ignoring bad news, initially covering up the SARS epidemic in 2003, for example.

So far, four deaths have been blamed on kidney stones and complications caused by the toxic milk. China's latest food safety crisis has triggered arrests, official sackings and bans and tightened inspections by trade partners.

WEN PLEDGES IMPROVEMENTS

China would "strengthen institutional development, and take seriously supervision and inspections in every link of production, truly ensuring the interests of consumers," Xinhua news agency quoted Wen as saying.

This was not the first time that a Chinese leader has sought to reassure a foreign audience that the country was cracking down on unsafe products.

Last year, China launched a quality drive after a surge of scares over toys, toothpaste, pharmaceutical ingredients and pet food ingredients -- which were also laced with melamine.

At that time, Chinese officials often said foreign media and critics had exaggerated the country's problems.