A Chinese official has issued an unusual apology for sitting on a report of tainted milk during the Olympics, as China’s president said lessons must be learnt after 12 per cent of milk powder was found to be contaminated.

China’s worst-ever food scandal has already claimed the lives of four babies and sickened some 53,000 after they were fed the powder, made by the once-prestigious Sanlu Group. It had been laced with the industrial chemical melamine, used in plastics and glue.

The government has already said that the city authorities in Shijiazhuang, where Sanlu is based, had covered up the extent of the problem for more than a month while China was under the international spotlight during the Beijing Olympic Games.

Wang Jianguo, a city government spokesman, revealed that Sanlu had approached them for help in managing the media response on August 2 – just six days before the games opened. Mr Wang did not say whether the municipality complied with the media control request, but he did say that the problem was not reported to the Hebei provincial government until September 9.

Officials had not thought through the consequences of their actions, he admitted. “The bungling of the best opportunity to report the handling of the issue caused much harm to people’s safety, and seriously affected the image of the party and the government,” he said. Mr Wang also voiced “deep guilt and pain” at the scandal.

In fact, local media had known that problems were being reported by parents of babies across China who had been fed Sanlu formula. Many had kidney stones. However, the reporters were unable to publish their findings because of strict media controls imposed by Communist Party censors – especially during the August games.

The scandal has shone a spotlight, once again, on deficiencies of industry oversight and the weakness of regulatory bodies, some of whose officials have in the past been jailed for corruption.

The statement by President Hu, who was visiting dairy companies in central Anhui province, underscores how seriously the government is taking the public outrage. “Food safety is directly linked to the well-being of the broad masses and the competence of a company. Chinese companies should learn the lessons,” he said.

However, he did not say whether the party would try to tackle the collusion of local governments in hiding similar scandals or the media controls that kept the news out of the public eye for so many months.

A nation wide check has now found melamine in 31 milk powder products – or 11.7 percent of a total of 265 products tested, the top quality watchdog said. It checked 154 companies, representing more than 70 percent of the entire milk powder market.

Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch company, became the latest well-known brand to fall foul of the practice by which collecting stations watered down milk from farmers and then added melamine to raise the protein levels. It recalled some Chinese products, taking Lipton milk tea powder off shelves in Hong Kong and Macau after tests showed a melamine taint.

However, Hong Kong’s food safety watchdog ruled that levels of melamine in 11 Cadbury’s chocolate products that the company recalled this week were found to be well within the acceptable limit. “Results available … showed that all samples were satisfactory,” it said.

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