Milk crisis hits China zoo

SHANGHAI – From human babies, China’s milk crisis apparently has spread to baby animals.

Two orangutans and a lion cub at the Hangzhou Safari Park near Shanghai have kidney stones after being fed milk powder for more than a year, said Zhang Xu, a veterinarian with the Hangzhou Zhangxu Animal Hospital.

The powder was made by the Sanlu Group Co., which is at the center of the tainted milk crisis. The industrial chemical melamine has been found in a growing range of Chinese-made dairy products, and it has been blamed for sickening 53,000 infants in China and killing four.

The two orangutans and a lion cub were found with kidney stones Wednesday after concerned officials sent them to Zhang for a checkup.

“The milk powder crisis made us very worried about the health situation of the baby animals,” Ju Lijia, the animal park’s public affairs manager, said by phone Wednesday. “We stopped feeding with Sanlu after it was found to be tainted.”

The orangutans and lion were the only ones found with kidney stones, Ju said.

Officials at the Beijing Zoo and zoos in the other major cities of Shanghai, Guangzhou and Xian said they had no cases of animals sickened from milk powder.

An official at the world’s most famous panda reserve, the Wolong Nature Reserve, said the baby pandas there are not fed on milk made from formula. – AP