All of the 75 children who fell ill after drinking contaminated milk last week are out of hospital, and most of them were back at school, the provincial authority on product quality and food safety said yesterday.
Inspectors from the Zhuhai center of disease control and prevention said traces of staphylococcus aureus enterotoxin (SE), a kind of bacteria, were present in the milk.
About 75 kindergarteners in Zhuhai and Jiangmen, Guangdong province, were poisoned after drinking contaminated high-calcium milk last Wednesday.
Kindergarteners who drank contaminated milk are treated at a hospital in Zhuhai, Guangdong province, last Wednesday. Li Jianshu
The students, from three kindergartens in Zhuhai and three in Jiangmen, were sent to hospital after experiencing symptoms such as vomiting and stomachaches.
Inspectors traced the milk back to Zhuhai Weiwei Bigshot Milk Co Ltd. The schools in Jiangmen also served milk made by Weiwei Bigshot.
In response, the company announced a province-wide recall of all high-calcium milk made last Wednesday.
The 4-year-old son of a woman surnamed Chen attends Zhuhai Cuiwei Kindergarten and spent the night vomiting up after drinking the bad milk.
"I got a text message from the kindergarten at about 9 pm that night about dozens of children getting sick after drinking the milk. It advised us to send our children to hospital for a checkup," Chen said.
All six kindergartens have long-term supply agreements with the milk company, and school officials said no accident had occurred before.
Inspectors said 14,107 boxes of high-calcium milk were tainted, and 13,408 boxes had been sold.
By Sunday, 6,873 boxes had been recalled from markets in Zhuhai, Jiangmen, Foshan, Zhongshan and Guangzhou. The unsold boxes have been recalled.
"We supply milk to more than 10 schools in Zhuhai city, but now we have suspended our production and sales links," Cao Rongkai, president of Weiwei Bigshot, said.
Police are investigating the case, he said.
None of the students were seriously ill, but some kindergartens and parents said they will not buy Weiwei Bigshot products in the near future.
"We won't buy milk from them in the coming months," Chen Wei, director of the Zhuhai Cuiwei Kindergarten, said.
(China Daily April 1, 2008)