Snackers beware: Oreo fillings contain no milk, but chocolate-filled Koala brand cookies and White Rabbit creamy candies do. The roll call of companies facing potential recalls grew Friday as reports of contamination of foods by the industrial chemical melamine spread to a widening range of products. Food companies around the globe are rushing to assess their products and in some cases setting new strategies to prevent problems. “We have to think about any processed food with milk or protein in it,” said James Rice, a food industry veteran who is now China country manager for Tyson Foods Inc., the world's largest meat processor. While his company is not affected, for others “that includes biscuits, cake mix, energy bars, anything that should have protein in it,” he said. Many food companies already were taking special precautions before Chinese milk suppliers were found to be adding melamine to watered-down raw milk to boost its apparent protein content. The melamine is blamed for killing four Chinese children and sickening 54,000. Some companies learned the need for extra diligence in China the hard way, during a spate of scandals last year from unsafe foods and toothpastes to melamine-laced ingredients in pet food. But many continued to disregard the risks, said Jeremy Haft, a businessman who runs factories in China in a variety of industries including medical products, clothing and building supplies. “I don't think much was learned from the recalls of a year ago,” said Haft, who has written of his experiences in a book, “All the Tea in China.” Tokyo-headquartered Lotte Group, a major snacks maker, got caught up in the storm Friday after its popular chocolate-filled Koala cookies were recalled in Hong Kong and Macau because of melamine contamination. Packages of the cookies, still on sale in Shanghai, list whole milk powder as an ingredient. “We will look deeply into all the details of the manufacturing process,” said Kayh Kim, manager of Lotte China Food's planning department in Beijing. “We really don't want to lose our customers' confidence.” In Tokyo, a company spokeswoman said Lotte products sold in Japan are not made with Chinese dairy ingredients. Meanwhile, the Shanghai-based maker of White Rabbit, a popular milk-flavored toffee, said it stopped domestic sales after the Hong Kong government's Center for Food Safety said the candy contained more than six times the legal limit of melamine.
