China milk scandal hits home

But his wife didn't have enough breast milk for the baby.

Then the 30-year-old businessman from Jiangsu province remembered that during his childhood, women would nurse each other's babies if one ran out of milk. So he decided to try a new twist on the old tradition: On Monday, he put an ad on the Internet soliciting a wet nurse.

"I don't know if any milk powder is safe," Wei said.

China's latest food scandal has created a surge of interest in wet nurses. Wei has been interviewing candidates who are asking for as much as $1,500 a month -- about 10 times the average price of a nanny.

Parents who can't afford such luxuries are in a quandary. As stores here and elsewhere in the world remove such products as yogurt and candies amid the scandal over contaminated milk, Chinese consumers are left wondering what else might be poisoning their children.

The discovery that melamine, a toxic industrial compound, had been added to Chinese milk has set off a panic extending through Asia, Europe and parts of Africa. (No tainted products have been discovered to date in the U.S.)

In Japan, cookies, buns, candies and cheese containing traces of the chemical have been recalled, some of them by venerable Japanese food companies that had purchased dairy products from China. In Hong Kong, U.S. manufacturer H.J. Heinz Co. pulled baby cereal from shelves, saying it had found minute traces of melamine.

In Taiwan, Pizza Hut said Friday that it had found tainted cheese and was removing it from restaurants. As a precaution, Starbucks outlets in China now offer only soy milk in drinks.

One of China's most beloved sweets, White Rabbit candy, which looks a bit like saltwater taffy, is being recalled worldwide because it has traces of tainted milk.

World Health Organization officials said Friday that China needed to develop its consumer protection system so that regulatory agencies communicated with one another and didn't attempt to sweep problems under the rug.

"You need a culture of openness and quick reporting," said Jorgen Schlundt, director of WHO's department of food safety, speaking to reporters in Beijing.