China's tainted milk scare spreads to Europe

From the shelves of Tesco in Britain to stores in Shanghai and France, China’s most popular sweet is being withdrawn amid fears it is contaminated with the industrial chemical in some milk powder that has left four babies dead and more than 50,000 in hospital.

The famed White Rabbit Creamy Candy, invented in 1943 by a Chinese businessmen impressed by a similar English milk candy, is being pulled because it is thought to contain contaminated milk. The recall in Shanghai and the southern island province of Hainan is the first widely known recall on the Chinese mainland of goods other than milk products and milk.

The candy was once marketed under the slogan “Seven White Rabbit candies is equivalent to one cup of milk” and has for five decades been a staple treat for every Chinese child.

China’s worst food safety scandal in decades has spread from formula produced by the country’s premier milk powder producer near Beijing to countries across Africa and Asia, an investor in New Zealand and supermarkets in Europe.