Hong Kong Finds More Tainted Eggs

SHANGHAI — Hong Kong food safety authorities said late Tuesday that for the fourth time in less than two months they had found a batch of eggs imported from China that were contaminated with illegal levels of melamine, the industrial chemical blamed for sickening hundreds of thousands of young Chinese children, six fatally.

The Hong Kong food safety agency has been conducting random tests for melamine on a variety of foods imported from China since a global recall of Chinese dairy products earlier this fall.

The agency said the tainted eggs were imported from a company based in Jilin Province in northern China and were being sold to bakeries in Hong Kong. The agency asked that the eggs be withdrawn from the market. It said the eggs 4.7 parts per million of melamine, nearly twice the level allowable in food products sold in the U.S., Hong Kong and China.

Still, Hong Kong authorities said a child would have to eat about 13 eggs in a single day to be strongly affected.

The finding comes a day after Chinese authorities gave a raised its count of the number of affected babies, raising the death toll from four and upping those sickened from 50,000 to 300,000. The stricken babies suffered from kidney stones and other ailments.

Source: The New York Times