China is yet to be over its deadly tainted milk scandal because its largest dairy producer Mengniu has confiscated and removed milk cartons from local market shelves baring its label found with toxic substances.

Mengniu Dairy Group said in its website that they were able to get the milk cartons containing cancer-causing toxins that almost got sold to the consuming public.

This is another food safety scare for China, which still reels from tainted dairy, rice and meat scandals in a matter of six months to nine months. Some shoddy and inconsiderate traders laced the food they sell with chemicals to pass up as the real thing in order to make profits.

The biggest milk scandal involved the selling of tainted milk formula for infants that killed more than 6 and hospitalised no less than 300,000 children in 2008.

A dairy farmer and a milk salesman were executed and 19 other people were jailed for their role in selling the tainted milk products.

Company statement

"Mengniu would like to express our sincere apologies to consumers," the company said, adding none of the tainted products had made their way into the market.

"We will draw a big lesson from this incident and will work harder to meet all national and corporate standards on quality in the future," the company said in its website.

Technical experts believe that the Mengniu sample official test found 1.2 micrograms of the toxic substance in the Mengniu sample. The sample product was a 250 ml pack of pure milk produced on Dec 18, according to the test result published on the website of the general administration.

Government authorities traced the deadly substance from contaminated cattle feed such as corn, rice and soybean. These commodities can accumulate high toxicity levels if stored for a long time.

While the national standard allowed a maximum of 0.5 micrograms carcinogenic content in a kg of milk, the Aflatoxin is virulent in terms of toxicity and is classified as a first-class carcinogen by the World Health Organization. With reports from China Daily News