Dairy producers unable to carry out laboratory tests in their factories were required to go to public inspection and quarantine institutions.

Wang also plans to put in place a set of systems to secure scientific analysis, encourage public and private investigations and reward whistle-blowers.

He said fundamental work, such as establishing measurements and standards, accreditation and certification, quality inspection and quarantine as well as the utilization of data, would be made priorities.

The Ministry of Health dispatched more than 1,600 medical teams, involving more than 8,000 people. More than 4,500 medical institutions nationwide have helped with medical tests.

"There have been no deaths caused by drinking tainted milk powder since September 11," said Chen Zhu, Minister of Health, on September 28. "The number of affected infants has dropped by a large margin, and all the infants in hospitals are receiving proper treatment."

As for financial aid for the dairy farmers who have suffered from shrinking demand following the scandal, China's Ministry of Agriculture said on October 5 that it had developed an emergency rescue plan with the Ministry of Finance to give them special subsidies.

The ministry said 14 local governments had already come up with policies to stabilize the dairy industry. North China's Hebei Province, for example, has earmarked 316 million yuan ($46.4 million) as subsidies on the basis of 200 yuan ($29) for each cow. The government of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region has allocated 100 million yuan ($14.7 million) as subsidies for dairy farmers.

More than 150,000 officials were sent to overhaul milk-collecting stations and cow feed supply chains on October 2. A total of 18,803 milk-collecting stations were registered and checked, 98 dairy producers were investigated and 151 illegal companies were banned.

In an effort to encourage dairy producers to buy raw milk, the Ministry of Finance said last month that the interest rate for loans lent to dairy producers for this purpose would be reduced by 3.1 percent, or half the six-month lending rate, from October to December.

The future

"Since it can be put on supermarket shelves now, I think there shouldn't be

any quality problems," said a consumer buying local liquid milk in Century Lianhua Supermarket in Hangzhou, the capital city of eastern China's Zhejiang Province

Several brands of liquid milk, including Mengniu, Yili and Bright have returned to the shelves of this supermarket since the melamine test, and although sales are still down by around 50 percent, they are significantly up on September.

In a Wal-Mart in Hangzhou, sales of liquid milk have reached about 90 percent of the pre-scandal level, according to a sales assistant at the store.

Meanwhile, the sales of local milk brands from Hangzhou, including Shuangfeng, Meilijian, which tested free of melamine, have risen by about 20 percent compared to before the scandal.

The situation is the same in many places. On October 4, the AQSIQ announced that the latest sample test of 609 batches of liquid milk from 27 cities across China showed no melamine in newly supplied liquid milk. Altogether 75 brands were sampled for testing, including top-selling ones such as Yili, Mengniu, Bright, Sanyuan and Wandashan, according to the AQSIQ.

The test was the sixth in China since the tainted milk powder scandal broke. A total of 2,093 batches of liquid milk from 115 brands, among other dairy products, have been checked since then, said the AQSIQ.

In the previous inspection, on September 30, officials tested 265 batches of adult milk powder produced by 154 companies before September 14. The tests found 31 batches from 20 companies were tainted with melamine.

However, just when consumer confidence began to rise, it was knocked back on October 1 when the AQSIQ announced that another 31 batches of milk powder had been found to contain melamine, including Sanyuan, which had previously tested negative.

The new batches being tested were mostly milk powder products for adults. The melamine content in the Sanlu brand reached 6,196 mg per kg in its so-called high iron and zinc formula, the highest among all the samples.

The State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC), which supervises product quality at the retail level, ordered all the tainted products to be immediately removed from store shelves on September 1.

For many consumers, the milk scandal raised concerns about all products containing milk. Many turned to bean products for protein as a result and mothers with babies began to use imported milk formula or to hire wet nurses.

The full recovery of China's dairy market is expected by the end of 2009, according to Huang Mao, a food industry analyst at Guosen Securities in Beijing. "There will be an increase in the market for baby formula milk powder," he said. "Imported milk powder, which has dominated the market in big cities, might spread to small cities and even rural areas and deliver a blow to domestic milk products."