BEIJING - CHINA sought on Saturday to shore up public confidence weakened by a milk safety scandal, with the president scolding officials for negligence and government agencies promising adequate supplies of uncontaminated milk.

The flurry of action comes as the government confronts one of the worst food safety crises in years.

Many leading brands of powdered and liquid milk and other dairy products have been pulled from store shelves after infant formula contaminated with the industrial chemical melamine sickened more than 6,200 children and left four dead.

In a measure of the scandal's scope, the Ministry of Health ordered all 31 provinces and major cities nationwide to set up separate 24-hour crisis hot lines to meet surging public calls and help arrange care for the sick.

The order followed a barrage of instructions late Friday from the State Council, China's Cabinet, requiring hospitals to provide free medical care.

To further calm public jitters, the top economic agencies promised to monitor markets for supply disruptions and for any price-gouging in sales of powdered milk - a staple in rural China.

'Market supplies of powdered milk not tainted with melamine are sufficient,' the Xinhua News Agency quoted the Commerce Ministry as saying.

State-run newspapers and national China Central Television ran lists of brands and products that were cleared of safety violations and deemed safe.

In Beijing and Shanghai, grocery stores where dairy sections were emptied by recalls Friday displayed thinly stocked shelves of milk by Saturday afternoon, mostly imported or from the China operations of Nestle SA and other foreign-owned dairies.

The apparently widespread contamination has rapidly become a political headache for a Communist government that hoped to be basking in praise for last month's successful Beijing Olympics.

Instead, the government is coping with an apparent cover-up by local officials and being forced to rebuild public trust.

'Some officials have ignored public opinion and turned a blind eye to people's hardships, even on major problems that affect people's lives and safety,' President Hu Jintao said in a speech on Friday to senior Communist Party members. 'We must learn a painful lesson.'

Though Mr Hu did not directly mention the contaminated milk - and the comment was but a small part of largely dry, wide-ranging policy speech - the quote was prominently reported by state media.

In a further display of resolve on a different post-Olympics scandal - the collapse of a mine waste dump that killed 262 people last week - the government announced on Saturday it was dismissing the mayor and vice mayor of Linfen city and detaining eight other local officials.

Tainted, substandard food and medicines have plagued China for years as companies freed by free-market reforms and lax government oversight rushed to meet swelling demand created by rising living standards.

Last year, the government promised to overhaul safety regimes after medicines, toys and pet foods killed and sickened people and pets in North and South America and other export markets.

On Saturday, Japan joined Singapore and Chinese-ruled Hong Kong in recalling Chinese-made dairy products. The Marudai Food Co issued a recall of cream buns, pork buns and three other products as a precaution because they were made by its Chinese subsidiary using milk from Chinese dairy giant Yili Industrial Group Co., which sold tainted products.

Yet the tainted milk is chiefly a domestic scandal with broad dimensions, striking products nationwide and endangering children.

Even worse, many families are allowed to have only one child under strict family planning limits.

In recent days tests by government inspectors found melamine in powdered and liquid milk samples from 22 dairy companies - including industry titans like Yili, Mengniu Dairy Group Co - prompting the recalls.

Melamine is a chemical used in making plastics and is high in nitrogen. When added to milk, tests register the melamine's nitrogen as protein. Though health experts believe ingesting minute amounts poses no danger, melamine can cause kidney stones, which can lead to kidney failure. Infants are particularly vulnerable.

Questions have been raised about whether officials sought to cover up contamination of powdered milk, in part to avoid a scandal around the August 8-24 Olympics.

The company at the heart of the scandal, Shijiazhuang Sanlu Group, received complaints about its infant milk formula as early as March, and local officials were notified in early August at the latest.

Suppliers, squeezed by higher costs for fertiliser, feed, gas and labour, are believed to have turned to melamine to cover up the fact that milk was being watered down to make more money.

A vice-governor of Hebei province, where Sanlu is located, told reporters this past week that two suppliers detained this month admitted they had been adding melamine to milk for three years. -- AP

Read also:
Milk scandal widens