BEIJING — Wal-Mart pulled a brand of eggs from all its stores in China on Tuesday after tests in Hong Kong found they were tainted with the same toxic chemical blamed for sickening tens of thousands of babies.
The discovery of melamine in eggs raises more questions about how far the chemical at the center of China’s tainted-milk scandal has penetrated the nation’s food chain.
Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, said it had removed the “Select” brand of eggs produced by China’s Dalian Hanwei Enterprise Group from its shelves in China. A government official in Dalian, the city where Hanwei is located, said the company had begun a nationwide recall of the suspect eggs.
Hong Kong testers found melamine in the eggs at nearly twice the territory’s legal limit for the chemical in food. The egg contamination has prompted Hong Kong officials to expand testing to Chinese meat imports.
Wal-Mart and Chinese officials said they had no figure for how many eggs had been recalled, and it was not immediately clear which countries import eggs from China. So far, no illnesses have been reported.
It remains unclear what eating melamine-tainted eggs will do to humans. But in the milk scandal, infant formula heavily contaminated with the chemical caused kidney stones and other kidney ailments in 54,000 children and was blamed in the deaths of four babies.
