WELLINGTON, New Zealand — China has halted imports of all milk powder from New Zealand and Australia, New Zealand's trade minister said on Sunday, after a bacterium that can cause botulism was found in some dairy products.
The discovery raised safety concerns that threatened New Zealand's $9.4 billion annual dairy trade. The global dairy giant Fonterra identified eight companies to which it had sold contaminated New Zealand-made whey protein concentrate, exported to China, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand and Saudi Arabia and used in infant milk powder and other products.
Nearly 90 percent of China's $1.9 billion in milk powder imports last year originated in New Zealand. Economists said a prolonged ban could produce a shortage of dairy products in China, including foreign-branded infant formula.
Australia became involved in the ban after some of the contaminated whey protein concentrate was exported there before being sent to China and elsewhere.
"The authorities in China, in my opinion absolutely appropriately, have stopped all imports of New Zealand milk powders from Australia and New Zealand," Tim Groser, the trade minister of New Zealand, told Television New Zealand.
While no official word of a ban came from Chinese authorities, China's consumer watchdog named four companies that had imported potentially contaminated products from Fonterra.
In a statement on its Web site, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine identified the companies as Dumex Baby Food, a subsidiary of Danone of France, two subsidiaries of the Wahaha Group, one of the largest beverage manufacturers in China, and the state-owned Shanghai Sugar, Tobacco and Alcohol company.
Fonterra, a big supplier of wholesale dairy ingredients to multinational food and beverage companies, said that Coca-Cola's Chinese subsidiary and animal feed companies in New Zealand and Australia also had been affected.
The State Food and Drug Administration, in an announcement on its Web site, said it had told representatives from Hangzhou Wahaha, Dumex and Coca-Cola China to stop sales of potentially contaminated products and recall any outstanding product lines with possible contamination as soon as possible.
A Coca-Cola spokeswoman said the company was preparing to recall select batches of its Minute Maid Pulpy Milky product line in China because it had used potentially contaminated whey protein, but added that because of the heat-treatment process it uses, there was no risk to consumers.
"The recall is really a measure we are putting in place to reassure consumers, but because of our manufacturing process, our products are safe for consumption in any case," Sharolyn Choy, group communications director for Coca-Cola Pacific, said by telephone.
She said only 55 pounds of the ingredient had been used out of 10,560 pounds received. But she did not say how much end product would be affected by the recall.
Some of China's biggest food and beverage companies are said to be customers of Fonterra.
Fonterra is a major supplier of bulk milk powder products used in infant formula in China, but it had stayed out of the branded space after the Chinese dairy company Sanlu, in which it had held a large stake, was found to have added melamine — often used in plastics — to bulk up formulas in 2008.
More than six children died in the industrywide scandal and hundreds became ill. Foreign-branded infant formula has since become a prized commodity in China.
The latest scare coincided with global dairy prices hovering near record highs as demand from emerging countries grows. A ban on New Zealand products was expected to push overall prices higher.
Economists said the ban could create shortages in China.
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