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Lipton, Glico and Ritz the latest businesses to be affected by milk powder scandal
After confectionery maker Lotte  and chocolate producer Cadbury,  food manufacturers Lipton,  Glico  and Ritz  are the latest big brands with products  found to be contaminated with the industrial chemical melamine.
Unilever  Hong Kong yesterday recalled four batches of Lipton 3-in-1  milk tea powder sold in Hong Kong and Macau, after  finding  melamine in internal quality checks.
'Melamine at the level between less than one part per million to 16ppm has been detected in the affected products,' Unilever Hong Kong marketing director Sharon Hwang   said. Unilever owns Lipton.
Under Hong Kong's guidelines, the melamine safety limit is 2.5 parts per million but 1ppm for pregnant women and young children.
Ms Hwang said the products recalled include mainland-produced milk powder. The affected items are Lipton Milk Tea Powder Original  (20 sachets) and Lipton Milk Tea Powder Gold (10 sachets and 20 sachets) with best-before dates between November 17 and November 19, 2009.
'We use milk powder from New Zealand and other foreign countries for most of our products ... only since May 17 have we started using China-made milk powder in some products,' she explained, adding that other Lipton products on the market were melamine-free.
The Centre for Food Safety  found excessive melamine in three other products  in its latest tests, which covered 119 samples of milk, chocolate, biscuits, cookies, cakes, egg rolls and other dairy products.
Glico Pocky Men's  coffee-cream-coated biscuit sticks had 43ppm of melamine,  and Zhongshan-produced coconut cakes and walnut cakes contained 19ppm and 3.7ppm of the chemical.
The centre's spokesman said a three-year-old child weighing 10kg would have to eat about 1.5 packs, or 0.07kg, of the Glico biscuit sticks a day to reach the melamine safety limit,  while an adult with a body weight of 60kg would need to consume about 17 packs daily to exceed the limit.
The centre also tested some chocolates made by Cadbury - which recalled 11 of its products  on Monday - and some M&Ms  and Snickers  chocolate bars.
Its spokesman said results showed all the samples were satisfactory although one -  Cadbury Chocolate Eclairs  (in the 180g package) - contained 1.9ppm of melamine.
Mars tested its  M&Ms, Snickers and Dove  chocolate products in Hong Kong and said they  were safe to eat.  That result came a day after the Indonesian Food and Drug Monitoring Agency  said it found unusually high levels of melamine in M&Ms, Snickers and Oreo  chocolate candies.
The Korea   Food and Drug Administration  yesterday said two more mainland-made snacks - Ritz Cracker Sandwiches   Cheese  produced by Nabisco Food Suzhou,   and Savoury Rice Crackers  made by Danyang Day Bright Foods   - contained  23.3ppm and 1.77ppm of melamine, respectively.
Kraft Foods  Hong Kong said the affected Ritz crackers were produced on the mainland while those sold  in Hong Kong were made in Indonesia and contained no dairy ingredients from the mainland.
An official with Danyang Day Bright Foods of Zhenjiang , Jiangsu province , who only gave his surname, Jia, said the company had not  at this stage  been informed by its  South Korean distributor about the reported melamine contamination.
Danyang Day Bright Foods  is one of the two subsidiaries set up by Thailand's Day Bright Group on the mainland.
Mr Jia admitted yesterday  that the company used to buy some of its powdered milk from Sanlu Group.    'But Sanlu only accounted for a small portion of our supplies,' he added.
Mr Jia said his company had frozen  its entire inventory  about two weeks ago, but declined to say if the stocks had been tested for melamine.



More big brands find melamine in stock