BEIJING — Chinese officials have found 76 tons of milk powder and dairy products laced with a deadly industrial chemical that were apparently left over from a milk scandal in 2008 that killed six babies and sickened hundreds of thousands.
The discovery in at least three provinces shows that toxic milk remains a danger in China despite a crackdown in which dozens of people were arrested and two — a dairy farmer and a milk salesman — were executed for producing or selling toxic milk.
State media and food safety experts said the recently seized melamine-tainted powder was probably produced in or before 2008 and stockpiled instead of destroyed.
China ordered tens of thousands of tainted milk products burned or buried after more than 300,000 children were sickened. But the government did not carry out the destruction itself.
“It is crucial to account for the amount that was contaminated back in 2008 and make sure it is being destroyed or disposed of safely,’’ said Dr. Peter Ben Embarek, a World Health Organization senior scientist on food safety based in Beijing. “As long as part of it is still not accounted for or destroyed properly we will unfortunately see these types of things happening again.’’
Tainted batches were also found this year in Shanghai and the provinces of Shaanxi, Shandong, Liaoning, and Hebei, prompting a 10-day emergency crackdown with inspection teams fanning out to 16 provinces.
The official Xinhua News Agency reported that the latest discovery occurred in June when authorities found 64 tons of raw materials for making milk powder and 12 tons of finished powder tainted with melamine at a factory in the far-western province of Qinghai.
In a separate case, also in June, authorities seized about 1,000 packets of tainted milk powder in the northeastern province of Jilin, Xinhua said.
A spokesman for the National Food Safety Regulating Work Office told Xinhua that the owner and two others at the Dongyuan Dairy Factory had been arrested.
