FDA burn tonnes of products tained with melamine

Deputy Public Health Minister Wicharn Meenchainant witnessed the incineration of tens of thousands of food product items contaminated with higher than acceptable levels of melamine at the Bang Pain industrial estate north of Bangkok .

Some 20,000 boxes of snacks such as cheese crackers and biscuits and more than 13,000 cans of unsweetened condensed milk containing high levels of melamine were destroyed.

Wicharn said the burning of the melaminetainted products was to assure Thailand's consumers that food products in the market are melamine free.

He expressed appreciation to the Thai Dairy Industry, producer of Mali milk products, as Thailand's first food processing plant to have its own equipment to test melamine in raw materials before using them in manufacturing.

Wicharn urged other food pro¬ducers and importers to strictly con¬trol the quality of their products and continue cooperating with the FDA to prevent contaminated food from reaching consumers.

Melamine, an industrial chemical used in the manufacture of plastics, has been used in some milk products and is blamed for the deaths of four infants in China and having left more than 53,000 others sick.