Six state agencies in China including the Ministry of Commerce, State Administration of Industry and Commerce, and The General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine on October 11 jointly issued an urgent order to request merchants nationwide of name brands of liquid milk products to pull all their products off from store shelves.

The state agencies ordered that all supermarkets, departments and retailers in towns and rural areas stop selling milk power and liquid milk produced before Sept 14 regardless of their brands and lots. The affected products including infant formula milk power, milk power and other formula milk power and liquid milk need to be taken off from shelves and sealed in stores and to wait for the manufacturers to have them tested from batch to batch.

The order specifies that only the products that meet the new standard on melamine are allowed to carry a label stating “Tested and Melamine Not Detected” and put back to shelves for sales.

In response, the Guangzhou city's Municipal Administration of Quality Inspection required that dairy companies be checking their inventories and get ready for their products produced before Sept 14 to be tested.

The testing of the affected dairy products is being conducted only by licensed laboratories. Any product that tests positive for melamine at a level over the limit should be reported to provincial inspection and hygiene departments immediately and in the meantime, the tainted products should be recalled, sealed and destroyed in an environment-friendly way. The products that contain no more than allowed amount of melamine can be labeled by the manufacturers and ship out for sales.

The milk products produced after Sept 14 are not required to carry any special label as long as they passed the test for melamine.

Melamine is an industrial ingredient commonly used in widely used in plastics. This chemical is in no way supposed to be in any foods. Some businessmen in China used it in diluted milk to keep the reading of protein content at a normal level.

The milk adulteration scandal killed at least 3 infants and sickened more than 50,000 nationwide in China.

The new standard limit for melamine that is allowed to be present in dairy products was set on Wednesday. For infant formula, no more than 1 mg melamine per kg is allowed. And no liquid milk and food products containing at least 15 percent milk, the limit is 2.5 mg per kg.