Authorities are checking eggs for melamine contamination after media reports that traces of the industrial chemical was found inside chicken eggs sold in China’s Hong Kong.

Dalian province’s Hanwei Group, which supplied the contaminated batch of eggs, has reportedly apologized to consumers and distributors.

Vietnam’s Deputy Health Minister Cao Minh Quang said the ministry was tracking eggs that may have been bought from China by residents of Vietnam’s border provinces.

The Food Administration was checking if a brand of Chinese dried egg powder identified as contaminated by the World Health Organization (WHO) had been issued an import license, Quang said.

He said the Health Ministry will work with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and customs authorities to check eggs.

“Food inspectors will inspect eggs and egg powder imported into Vietnam,” he said.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development is to send officials today to take samples of eggs and chicken cooking from northern farms to test for melamine.

Head of the ministry’s Breeding Bureau Hoang Kim Giao said the results would be known in a few days, adding that the samples would be taken in several cities and provinces, including Hanoi and Bac Ninh and Hoa Binh provinces.

However, Quang said he believed local eggs would be found to be free of melamine, an industrial chemical used to make plastic. Melamine-contaminated milk in China has killed four infants and sickened more than 53,000 children.

Earlier tests of livestock feed, conducted after China’s tainted milk scandal broke last month, found no trace of the chemical.

A source from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development said Vietnam did not import eggs from China but there was a possibility Chinese eggs could have been brought into the country overland by residents of border areas.

Reported by Quang Duan – Nam Son