An inspection team established by the State Council has fanned out to a number of provinces heavily affected by the tainted-milk scandal to step up monitoring of dairy production.
Team members have gone to Hebei , Shanxi , Inner Mongolia , Shandong , Jiangsu , Henan and Gansu to investigate the production, processing, market supply and quality control of milk products, China Central Television reported last night.
The team would focus on how local governments carried out the central leadership's policies on tackling the crisis, the report said.
The inspectors would visit places such as shopping malls, supermarkets and markets selling agricultural products to make sure substandard milk products had been pulled off the shelves. The supply, sale and pricing of milk products would also be examined, it said.
The food scare, centred on milk produced by major dairy companies, such as Inner Mongolia-based Mengniu and Yili, and Hebei-based Sanlu, has since spread to other products by various companies.
The team - which comprises representatives from ministries including the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Agriculture and the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine - will also follow up on the medical treatment of sick babies.
With concerns mounting over a possible collapse of the mainland's dairy industry, the Ministry of Agriculture said yesterday that it was urging dairy facilities to honour their contracts with farmers and continue to collect fresh milk from them.
Several provinces have promised to subsidise dairy farmers because consumption of milk products has fallen sharply.
Hebei has earmarked 316 million yuan (HK$360 million) to be distributed to dairy farmers in response to the severe blow suffered by Sanlu, which is based in the provincial capital, Shijiazhuang . It was Sanlu's powdered infant formula that was first discovered with melamine, an industrial chemical, before it was found in products by other companies. Shanxi will grant dairy farmers a subsidy of between 10 and 18 yuan per day for each cow, and Liaoning has allocated 108 million yuan to subsidise its 240,000 cows.
The Ministry of Agriculture said on its website that farmers in some regions had dumped large amounts of milk in the past few days.