Milk giant Bright Dairy acknowledged irregularities at one of
its plants Monday, but denied using expired milk in its
products.
Bright Dairy made the announcement about two weeks after media
reports alleged that the company's plant in Henan Province used
expired milk in its products.
"Bright Dairy has been cleared of using expired milk. But the
incident exposed problems in the company's management," Bright
Dairy's chairperson Wang Jiafen was quoted in the announcement as
saying.
Bright Dairy said its Henan
branch didn't use expired dairy products acquired from the market.
Instead, it used "stock" that had not expired.
An inspection team from the Zhengzhou Municipal Government
confirmed this.
Song Kungang, head of China's Milk Industry Association, said it
was "absolutely unacceptable" to re-use stock to make dairy
products.
A lawyer in Shanghai surnamed Wu said that according to State
quality regulations, food enterprises are not to use recycled
material in food production.
In another development, Bright Dairy's Shanghai plant was found
to have wrongly labeled its products -- items produced on June 13
were labeled June 15.
(Shenzhen Daily June 22, 2005)