China's Mengniu discovers tainted milk

China Mengniu Dairy (2319.HKG), China largest dairy company, said it had destroyed a batch of milk contaminated with a cancer-causing substance, Reuters reported. Mengniu posted on its website on Sunday that it had destroyed a batch of milk products at a plant in Sichuan province found by China’s quality watchdog to contain aflatoxin, a substance produced by food fungus that can cause liver cancer. “Mengniu would like to express our sincere apologies to consumers. 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, adding that none of the tainted products had entered the market. China is especially sensitive to food scandals, especially involving milk as the country’s rapidly growing but fragmented dairy industry is managing to win back consumers’ confidence after a series of milk scandals. In 2008, a nationalwide scandal led to the deaths of six children and the illnesses of 300,000 children from powdered milk laced with melamine.