Bright Foods (Group) Co Ltd, the producer of White Rabbit creamy candy, on Thursday suspended exports of its reportedly tainted products, according to Ge Junjie, vice president of the nation's leading food conglomerate.

Since the Singapore government found the famous Chinese confectionery contained illegal food additive melamine, all White Rabbit creamy candy has been removed from shelves in the island nation.

The Shanghai-based group has cooperated with the inspection and quarantine authorities in examining the products and final results will be released later, the company said.

"It's tragedy for the Chinese food industry and a big lesson for us as it ruined the time-honored brand," said Ge.

"Food quality will be one of the biggest consolidations in our future strategic partnerships and we will keep tight controls throughout the inspection and research and development processes."

The White Rabbit candy made by Bright Foods is exported to more than 20 countries and regions and Southeast Asia is one of its major destinations.

Bright Foods has established emergency working panels and pledged to settle the whole issue under the same guidelines for dairy products ordered by the State Council, or the Cabinet.

Meanwhile, it was announced on Thursday that 4 percent of babies exposed to tainted formula and examined in Shanghai hospitals were found to be suffering from kidney and urinary-tract stones.

Most had very small stones and those aged over six months would simply pass the stones through a combination of medication and increased water intake, city health officials said.

The Shanghai cases detected with stones and the hospitalization numbers were reported to the Ministry of Health.

The bureau reported that on September 12 alone, all 22 children found suffering from stones had been drinking Sanlu-brand milk formula. This was just a day after Sanlu admitted to the adding of melamine to its products.

Dr Geng Hongquan, from Shanghai's Xinhua Hospital, said the stones due to melamine-tainted formula were made of uric acid and were thus small and loose.

"There shouldn't be severe consequences for recovered patients," he said.

Doctors said the wide range of free checkups also detected many cases of congenital urinary diseases in local children.

Free screening will still be available in Shanghai during the week-long National Day holidays.

Dr Zhu Guanghua, from the Shanghai Children's Hospital, on Thursday had wise words for parents of young - don't panic and overreact.

"We suggest parents not take children who have no symptoms or haven't consumed tainted formula to hospital," Zhu said.

"Too many children gathering together may result in unnecessary in-hospital infections."

Nestle Corp China issued a statement yesterday saying the company was confident that all its Chinese-made products were safe and did not contain melamine. On Wednesday, Hong Kong's Food Safety Center found traces of melamine in Nestle Dairy Farm Pure Milk.

(Shanghai Daily September 26, 2008)