China says tainted milk scandal spreading, with 3 babies dead and more than 6,200 sickened

Yashili exported its products to Bangladesh, Yemen and Myanmar, but AQSIQ said initial testing of samples of the company's exports turned up no trace of melamine.

In Hong Kong, food inspectors ordered a recall after melamine was found in an ice cream bar made by Shanghai Yili AB Foods. The amounts of the chemical found "would not pose major health effects from normal consumption of the bar, however, small children should not eat it," the Center for Food Safety said in a notice posted on its Web site.

It is the second crisis to raise questions about government accountability in China since the image-boosting Beijing Olympics ended Aug. 24. At least 258 people died last week when a retaining wall of a waste dump at an illegal mine in northern China collapsed.

The widening scandal is an embarrassing failure for China's product safety system, which was overhauled to restore consumer confidence and preserve export markets after a string of recalls and warnings abroad last year over tainted toothpaste, faulty tires and other goods.

It is the second major case in recent years involving baby formula. In 2004, more than 200 Chinese infants suffered malnutrition and at least 12 died after being fed phony formula that contained no nutrients.

Zhang Zhenling, Sanlu's vice president, has apologized but did not explain why the company took so long to inform the public about the contamination despite receiving complaints as early as March and having tests confirm the presence of the chemical in early August.

The company went public last week with the information after its New Zealand stakeholder, Fonterra, told the New Zealand government, which then informed the Chinese government.

Sanlu's General Manager Tian Wenhua was fired and dismissed from the company's board of directors as a result of the scandal, the official Xinhua News Agency quoted Communist Party officials as saying in the northern city of Shijiazhuang in Hebei province, where the company is based. Tian was also removed from a Communist Party position, it said.

Four other Hebei officials were fired Tuesday. They included Zhang Fawang, the agricultural production head in Shijiazhuang, and the city's Food and Drug Administration Bureau director Zhang Yi and the city's Quality and Technical Inspection Bureau chief Li Zhiguo, Xinhua said.

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