Chinese dairy company executive, Zhang Jianqiu, picked up a carton of milk from a press conference table and takes a sip. He drinks milk everyday but it has been very difficult to persuade his customers to do the same after the country's tainted milk scandal.

Chinese dairy companies including the Mengniu and Yili among others which were blamed for sickening 50,000 babies now face the immense task of restoring customer confidence in their brands.

In a move to do just that, dozens of reporters were invited on a tour Thursday of the automatic processing and packaging facilities at Yili's headquarters in Hohhot, which is known as the dairy capital of China. The same group was also taken to see Mengiu's testing labs and modern milk farm.

"We hope you can see that we are very strict with our quality," said Yili executive Zhang Jianqiu. "Problems did occur with our products, but that was a very limited few and we are doing everything we can to clean it up."

Both Yili and Mengniu said melamine, a chemical used to make plastic, was added by middlemen to watered-down raw milk at collection stations to make it appear high in protein.

The two companies acknowledged they share responsibility for failing to detect the banned substance.

"We feel shocked, saddened and deeply harrowed upon learning about this," said Zhang. "This is a big flaw on our part and we are deeply sorry for the customers."

Yili said it spent 100 million yuan (about US$15 million) to import melamine-testing equipment from the United States and Japan. It also sent one-fourth of its entire staff to inspect privately-run milk stations around the country.

"Nothing is more important than providing safe milk and restoring our image," Zhang said.

Banners that read, "Zero tolerance of problematic milk" and "No single drop of substandard milk in the factory and no single carton of substandard milk in the market" now hang walls at Yili and Mengniu.

Yang Wenjun, executive of Mengniu, said adding melamine to milk was immoral and pledged that the company's products are now 100 percent safe.

Despite those promises, customers continue to seek dairy alternatives such as soybean milk.

At the New Century Supermarket in the Shapingba District in Chongqing, most Yili and Mengniu products were being offered at half price, however, few were being sold.

"We used to order hundreds of boxes of dairy products, but this time we only ordered 13 because fewer people are coming to buy milk," said a supermarket manager surnamed Liu on Friday.

In some parts of China, like Shandong in the east, milk used to be given as presents to friends and family. Now, people are abandoning that custom.

Both Mengniu and Yili executives said sales slumped to less than 10 percent in the first few days of the scandal. Volume has been slowly climbing back up as companies and governments take action to quell people's doubts.

Dairy companies aren't the only ones suffering.

Fallout from the scandal affected 800,000 cow breeders in the Inner Mongolia Region and millions of people who work on dairy farms.

Guo Qijun, vice chairman of the Inner Mongolian regional government, said farmers will receive about 180 million yuan in subsidies in the next few days.

He added that plans are being drawn up to consolidate the industry by merging milk collection stations into larger cooperatives.

"Although the scandal was a bad thing, it pushed the button for a baptism of the whole industry," Guo said. "We will make sure that the dairy industry will develop in a sound and healthy way."

While the dairy industry is being overhauled, thousands of parents worry about their sick children. Wednesday's statistics from the Health Ministry show 5,824 babies remain hospitalized. Six are in serious condition.

(Xinhua News Agency October 17, 2008)