Chinese official in milk crisis resigns

China’s product-quality chief resigned Monday as the government sought to contain a national crisis over tainted baby formula that has sickened 53,000 children and implicated the biggest dairy producers in the country.

The official New China News Agency said without explanation that Li Changjiang had stepped down as director of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine.

Li and his agency have been under heavy fire since reports surfaced two weeks ago that milk powder made by the Sanlu Group was contaminated with the industrial chemical melamine.

Since then, tests by the watchdog agency showed that formula from 22 dairy producers was tainted with the substance, which was also found in pet foods that killed dogs and cats last year in the U.S.

China’s Health Ministry said three babies died after ingesting Sanlu formula, although state media reported four deaths. On Sunday, the ministry said 12,892 infants had been hospitalized with kidney problems.

Officials said tests have also turned up melamine in liquid milk. At least 18 people have been arrested, including some who are suspected of deliberately adding melamine to milk to artificially inflate protein levels.

Li, 64, had weathered a number of food and product safety scandals since taking charge of the agency in 2001, including one involving the deaths of at least 13 babies in 2004 after they drank fake powdered milk in Anhui province, a poor region in eastern China.

“The tainted milk powder issue not only affected the entire Chinese food industry, but more seriously, it shook people’s confidence in government,” said Hu Xingdou, professor of economics and China issues at the Beijing Institute of Technology.

Hu added that China’s quality-control problems are hardly limited to milk powder. “But for a very long period, [the agency] didn’t fulfill its duty, didn’t regulate or conduct routine inspections,” he said.

Eight Chinese companies sued the agency this summer, accusing it of colluding with a company that makes bar codes, in which it had a stake. Courts refused to hear the case. In August, one of the agency’s top regulators committed suicide after he was questioned in a corruption inquiry.

Li is being replaced by Wang Yong, until recently the deputy secretary-general of the State Council, China’s Cabinet, the New China News Agency reported.

The Communist Party secretary of Shijiazhuang, the city where Sanlu is based, was also fired Monday. The city’s mayor, vice mayor and three lower-level officials previously had been fired.

Since the latest scandal broke, infant formula and other milk products have been pulled from shelves across China. Exports of instant coffee mix, milk and milk-based candy have been blocked at some Asian borders.

Experts said this latest blow to China’s global reputation, following a string of toy, food, medicine, toothpaste and other scandals in 2007, underscores serious problems.

“This is a systemic failure,” said Arthur Kroeber, Beijing-based editor of the respected China Economic Quarterly. “You can’t assume that the Chinese piece of the global supply chain follows the rules.”

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don.lee@latimes.com

mark.magnier@latimes.com

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Lee reported from Shanghai and Magnier from Beijing.