SFDA finds melamine in Nestle milk
Fatima Sidiya | Arab News
JEDDAH: More than two months after the Saudi Food and Drugs Authority (SFDA) called on the Ministry of Commerce and Industry to ensure that no Chinese-manufacture d milk products were being sold in the Kingdom, the SFDA issued a
consumer alert yesterday on the presence of the industrial chemical melamine in milk powder made by a Nestle plant in China and Apollo Chocolate Wafer Cream snack bars.
And, sure enough, store shelves in Jeddah were stocked with the product that the SFDA named yesterday: Nestle’s Nesvita Pro Bone Protection high calcium milk (specific samples produced in China on different dates in 2007 and 2008) and
Apollo Chocolate Cream-Filled Wafer bars, made by Malaysia’s Apollo Food Industries.
“The SFDA found five samples from all the samples tested (contaminated with melamine),” said a statement on the SFDA website.
The SFDA claims it found the melamine during a random sampling of 52 products containing powdered milk. Nestle was quick to issue a statement yesterday claiming that none of its milk products contain melamine and that all of its products sold in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the world meet World Health Organization standards.
Melamine is an industrial compound found in plastics that has been used by unscrupulous manufacturers in China to fool government protein content tests. Melamine, which has been shown to cause kidney stones or kidney failure, especially among infants, is added to the milk in order to lower costs, cheat nutr ition tests and pass powdered milk products onto the world market that have lower-than-acceptab le levels of protein.
In September, SFDA Executive President Mohammed Al-Kenhal said: “We have contacted the ministry to take necessary measures to make sure that the Kingdom’s markets are free of Chinese milk.”
The Ministry of Commerce and Industry confirmed that Saudi Arabia was not importing any milk products from China . Many local traders also said that there is no Chinese milk in the Kingdom’s markets,,,,so
