By Bae Ji-sook
Staff Reporter
The health authorities ordered Thursday a recall of two melamine-contaminated snacks.
The Korea Food and Drug Administration said the recall includes the ``Misarang Custard'' snack sold by Haitai Confectionary and ``Milk Rusk,'' a snack imported from Hong Kong. The FDA said it has found 137 parts per million of melamine (ppm) in Misarang Custard, which is made in China under an original equipment manufacturing (OEM) arrangement. It also found 7 ppm of melamine in Milk Rusk.
``All of the snacks will be recalled and destroyed,'' an FDA official said.
Melamine can cause renal problems such as kidney stones or acute renal failure.
Rep. Lim Doo-sung of the governing Grand National Party said Chinese plastic dishes were found with carcinogens ― three times and five times higher than permissible levels ― in 2006 and 2008. The government disposed of 1.2 tons and 440 kilograms of these at those times, but Lim suspected that other dishes containing the material might have cleared inspection.
``No matter how safe or healthy the food is, you will never be safe if you serve it on such tableware,'' he said.
A subcontractor factory of Milk Rusk in China has been using the same toxic ingredient to produce ``Danish Butter Cookie'' and about 5,908 boxes are already on store shelves here, Rep. Yoo Jae-jung of the GNP said.
Anxiety has turned to distrust of Chinese products as a whole. Rep. Ahn Hong-joon also of the GNP called for strengthening inspections on all Chinese products. ``Every year, the country imports more and more food and products from China but an average of 1,056 cases a year failed to meet the quality inspection,'' he said. ``About 94.3 percent of plastic tableware is for children and we need to pay extra attention on its safety,'' he said.
Melamine is used to make fertilizer and plastics, but it was mixed with powered milk to simulate a boost in protein levels. Chinese media reported that roughly 13,000 infants in Mainland China and Hong Kong were hospitalized with kidney stones and four have died.