MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

EU bans Chinese baby food and could include other foods

The European Union has banned imports of baby food that contains Chinese milk and is considering restrictions on other Chinese food products with powdered milk, as a tainted milk scandal in China takes on international proportions.

The European Commission said in a statement it would ban all products for children that contained milk from China - regardless of how small the quantity. The EU executive arm also said authorities would test products coming from China that had more than 15% of milk powder. The announcement comes as controversy continues in China over infant milk formula tainted with the industrial chemical melamine that has killed four babies and sickened thousands of Chinese children. In France, which currently holds the current EU presidency, the government is going further - removing all products containing milk products from China from the store shelves. Monique Eliot, a senior official in the French agricultural ministry, told French radio the government was asking stores to check their stocks and shelves for Chinese products containing milk. The government will also have experts enforce the controls in supermarkets and stores specializing in Asian products. She said the EU has not imported products like milk or powdered milk from China - but they could have come into the 27-member bloc illegally. As for other products containing milk - like biscuits or chocolate - she said it was difficult to say how much had been consumed across the EU in the past year. The UN children's fund, UNICEF, and the World Health Organization have described the Chinese milk scandal as deplorable. "Whilst any attempt to deceive the public in the area of food production and marketing is unacceptable, deliberate contamination of foods intended for consumption by vulnerable infants and young children is particularly deplorable," the statement said. "We also expect that following the investigation and in the context of the Chinese government's increasing attention to food safety, better regulation of foods for infants and young children will be enforced," the UN statement said. In China, the problem has spread to a popular brand of candy, with authorities pulling White Rabbit candy from shelves in Shanghai and the southern province of Hainan. White Rabbit, which has been recalled already in Singapore, Britain, Australia and New Zealand, was found to contain "unsatisfactory" levels of melamine â€" more than six times the legal limit â€" in a test of 67 dairy products, according to the Hong Kong government's Center for Food Safety.