China's State Council, or Cabinet, on Wednesday said it had ordered mainland dairy giant Sanlu to immediately stop sales of powdered milk in Taiwan after announcing the group had sold products contaminated with melamine to the island.

State Council spokesman Li Weiyi said 25 tons of powdered milk sold by Hebei-based Sanlu to Taiwan in June were found contaminated with melamine.

"The Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council informed the Taiwan authorities immediately after the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine reported the case, and has ordered Sanlu Companies to ask their Taiwan partners to stop selling the contaminated milk powder," said Li at a press conference in Beijing.

"We have also informed Taiwan authorities about the other 21 mainland diary companies whose products were found contaminated with melamine," said Li. However, those companies had sold no products to Taiwan.

"We feel deeply sorry for the hazards Sanlu infant formula might have brought to Taiwan consumers," said Li.

He said the Taiwan Affairs Office was putting food safety as one of the topics for the second round of talks between the mainland's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) and Taiwan's Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF).

Regarding the possible contamination of melamine in artificial coffee creamer products sold to Taiwan, Li said that so far, there was no evidence of such contamination.

He said Shandong provincial quality inspection bureau had checked the creamer produced by Qingdao-based Shandong Duqing Company, which was reported by some Taiwan media as selling tainted products to Taiwan, and did not find evidence of melamine contamination.

The company sold 70 tons of creamer products to Taiwan in November last year, the main ingredient of which was glucose syrup, with only 1 to 2 percent of protein, Li said.

The protein level was not among the criteria for judging the product's quality, so there was no reason for the company to add melamine, he said.

Li said the tainted milk was a major food safety incident, and both the mainland and Taiwan authorities were making efforts to minimize its negative impact on the cross-Strait relationship.

"We are co-operating with the SEF and Taiwan authorities to find where the tainted milk was sold and to make a thorough investigation into the whole incident," he said.

He said that Taiwan consumers who were affected by the tainted Sanlu milk could seek compensation through the SEF and the ARATS. The mainland authorities would organize expert committees to deal with those cases.

Li said the cross-Strait joint maritime search and rescue exercise, which was scheduled this week in Xiamen, was postponed till October due to the impact of Typhoon Hagupit.

He said the incident of tainted milk would not affect the general trend of the expanding cross-Strait economic exchanges and collaborations. To maintain the peaceful development of the relationship would still be the common wish and of the fundamental interest of the people on both sides.

(Xinhua News Agency September 24, 2008)