Reports that a popular infant food is causing premature development of breasts among children has sparked off fears of safety of baby food products in China.
    
A Chinese maker of infant formula is being accused of causing premature development of sexual organs as old as few months, state run Global Times reported today.
    
Three babies from central Hubei Province, aged four, nine and 15 months, were found to be showing symptoms of breast development and abnormal levels of the growth of female hormones and it was blamed on the products of Qingdao-based Synutra International, a Chinese infant-formula company.
    
The baby girls from Hankou, Hanyang and Wuchang in Hubei were found to have been fed baby-formula products tagged with the same lot number, produced by Synutra International, prompting parents to point fingers at one of the leading makers of powdered baby formula in China.
      
Deng Xiaoyun, the mother of a one-year-old girl told the newspaper that her daughter was diagnosed at the Wuhan Children's Hospital as having developed hormone-triggered premature development of breasts.
      
She said her daughter's breast began to grow as large as those of a 12-year-old girl in her neighborhood.
    
"At first, I thought it was a tumor. But hospital doctors preliminarily diagnosed it as symptom of sexual prematurity caused by hormones, a diagnosis backed by the results of an examination carried out by the Hubei Women and Children's Health," she said.
    
"I don't breastfeed my daughter. She lives on the Synutra milk power, which must be the culprit of her current condition," Deng said.
    
"The company's agents contacted me last month to offer 2,000 yuan (USD 294) as a settlement in the matter. I refused to accept the offer. Even if it was ten times, I won't consider accepting it," she said.

Yao Hui, with the endocrinology department at Wuhan Children's Hospital, told the Shanghai-based Oriental Morning Post that it is rare for a baby girl under two to be diagnosed as "precocious".

"Authorities ought to test the samples of the dairy maker's products to confirm whether sex hormones are contained in the milk powder," he said.

Synutra International, among the top three companies in China denied the accusations saying that its products are free of hormones.
    
"We demand an official quality examination," it said in a statement.
    
Huang Weidong, a professor specialising in food-safety supervision at China Agricultural University, said, "All dairy products made by certified manufacturers must undergo strict quality tests, including on hormone levels, and problematic products won't be allowed to hit the market."
    
"But despite the strict screening of food products, some illegal manufacturers might still sell unsafe food products to seek profits," he said.
    
China's Domestic dairy companies, whose reputations plummeted in 2008 after a widely publicised scandal involving contaminated baby formula, are capable of competing only in the low-end market, as foreign-invested dairy makers monopolise the high-end market.
    
Six children died and thousands of children fell sick in China in 2008 due to Melamine, (chemical used to make plastics) contaminated baby formula.
    
Melamine is used to artificially inflate protein levels in watered-down milk.
      
Two years after the scandal, food-safety authorities recently seized almost 100 tons of melamine-tainted milk products, raising criticism of insufficient market supervision and fears of a re-entry of deadly baby formula into the market, the Global Times report said.