The permissible concentration of melamine, an industrial chemical, in dairy products would not be made public at the present in order to avoid public complacency, Deputy Health Minister Cao Minh Quang said Sunday.

If the Ministry of Health announced the permissible concentration limit of melamine, the public would relax their vigilance against dairy products containing the chemical below those levels and could end up suffering chronic poisoning with regular use, Quang said at a press briefing in Hanoi Sunday.

Such contamination would be very difficult to discover in the initial phase and would only manifest itself after consumers had developed symptoms like kidney stones, he said.

Recent nationwide milk inspections have discovered many dairy products that fell short of required nutritional quality.

Of 20 milk samples examined, half had protein content lower than what was stated on the label, said Tran Van Dung, Director of the Quality Assurance and Testing Center III, at the meeting held to review inspections carried out across the country in the wake of the melamine scandal.

The protein content in one product was just 0.5 percent compared with the 20 percent its label boasted, Dung said.

Minister of Health Nguyen Quoc Trieu also said at the press briefing that Vietnam has almost succeeded in stopping the use of melamine-tainted dairy products nationwide.

Inspections over the past month have discovered 24 melamine-contaminated dairy products.

However, Trieu asked agencies concerned to continue their inspections into milk quality to ensure no poisonous dairy products would affect public health.

The melamine contamination scandal broke out in China, where it killed at least four children and sickened 53,000, prompting bans or recalls of Chinese goods around the world.

Reported by Lien Chau