Egypt's Health Minister Hatem el-Gabaly issued yesterday a resolution calling for continuous controls on the possible presence of melamine in all daily products for children. This comes after the Chinese government announced yesterday that 296,000 Chinese infants had fallen sick and some had even passed away after drinking some melamine-tainted milk. Different bodies, such as the National Nutrition Institute (NNI), the Chemistry Authority and Cairo University Faculty of Agriculture, were informed so that they may cooperate on this issue. The minister also decided to resort to the National Research Center (NRC) to analyze the samples. El-Gabaly affirmed that Egypt imports dairy products for children from Holland, France and Belgium but not from China. He told Al-Masry Al-Youm that all kinds of dairy products for children in Egypt are completely free of this toxic substance (melamine) and that the Ministry of Health is applying tough criteria on imported medicines and food in all airports and ports to make sure they do not contain any hazardous substance. "Egyptian laws on food do not include analyses to find out whether food contains melamine because this substance is not expected to be added to set the quantity of proteins and increase the percentage of nitrogen. However, given the cases of poisoning and the death of some children in China, we had to take all possible measures to make sure that the dairy products available in Egypt are safe" the minister said. The general director for food control at the ministry, Dr. Mohamed Saeed, said the ministry had decided to ban any dairy product brought from China by passengers. "Quarantine authorities in airports and ports confiscate and immediately destroy any quantity of such products possessed by passengers".
