
By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Eating a tiny bit of a melamine, the chemical responsible for a global food safety scare, is not harmful except when it's in baby formula, U.S. food safety officials said today.
Melamine-tainted formula has sickened more than 54,000 children in China and is being blamed for the deaths of at least four tots. The chemical has also turned up in products sold across Asia, ranging from candies, to chocolates, to coffee drinks, that used dairy ingredients from China. Authorities in California and Connecticut have found melamine in White Rabbit candies imported from China.

HOHHOT, China (AFP) — China on Tuesday declined to release updated figures revealing just how many children have been affected by the tainted milk scandal, as it insisted it was working hard to boost confidence.
The health ministry said it had new statistics showing how many babies were believed to have been left ill by the crisis, but did not release the data and gave no indication of if or when it would made the latest information public.
"We've not released the latest number of cases because it is not an infectious disease, so it's not absolutely necessary for us to announce it to the public," a health ministry spokesman told AFP.
Previous official figures said milk powder tainted with the chemical melamine had claimed the lives of four children and made a further 53,000 ill.
Melamine, used to produce plastic, can make watered-down milk appear richer in protein than it really is.
Since melamine was found to be the cause of kidney stones in thousands of Chinese children who had been fed tainted baby formula, a worldwide wave of recalls and warnings over Chinese products has kicked in.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BEIJING - While China grapples with its latest tainted food crisis, the political elite are served the choicest, safest delicacies. They get hormone-free beef from the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, organic tea from the foothills of Tibet and rice watered by melted mountain snow.
And it's all supplied by a special government outfit that provides all-organic goods from farms working under the strictest guidelines.
That secure food supply stands in stark contrast to the frustrations of ordinary citizens who have faced recurring food scandals — vegetables with harmful pesticide residue, fish tainted with a cancer-causing chemical, eggs colored with industrial dye, fake liquor causing blindness or death, holiday pastries with bacteria-laden filling.
Now that the country's most reputable dairies have been found selling baby formula and other milk products tainted with an industrial chemical that can cause kidney stones and kidney failure, many Chinese don't know what to buy. Tens of thousands of children have been sickened and four babies have died.
Knowing that their leaders do not face these problems has made some people angry.
"Food safety is a high priority for children and families of government officials, so are normal citizens less entitled to safe food?" asked Zhong Lixun, feeding her 7-month-old grandson baby formula after he got checked for kidney stones at Beijing Children's Hospital.
(Source: http://www.nydailynews.com/, http://www.chron.com/, http://news.aol.com/, http://afp.google.com/;
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