* EU proposes tests, restrictions on China milk products

* Fifth child sick in Hong Kong

* UNICEF and WHO urge enforcement of quality standards

* China quality watchdog announces milk rules

* Mothers urged to breast feed infants

By James Pomfret

HONG KONG, Sept 25 (Reuters) - The European Commission proposed on Thursday tests and restrictions on Chinese food products containing powdered milk as UNICEF and the World Health Organisation called China's growing milk scandal "deplorable".

In Hong Kong, the government said a fifth child was suffering kidney problems related to drinking tainted milk. The 10-year-old boy was found to have kidney stones.

Beijing is battling public alarm and international dismay after thousands of Chinese children were hospitalised, sick from infant milk formula tainted with melamine, a cheap industrial chemical that can be used to cheat quality checks.

A European Commission spokeswoman said EU authorities would test all products from China containing more than 15 percent of milk powder, and would ban all products for children and young people containing any proportion of milk.

This came as the World Health Organisation and UNICEF issued a joint statement saying the deliberate contamination of food for infants and young children was "particularly deplorable".

But the two agencies said Beijing's plan to overhaul its food safety would help prevent a recurrence.

"We are confident that swift and firm actions are being taken by China's food safety authorities to investigate this incident fully," the two organisations said in a statement.

The WHO and UNICEF urged mothers to breast feed their infants, a need further underscored by "alarming examples" of tainted formula scandals in China and around the world.

Later on Thursday, China's quality watchdog announced rules intended to choke off threats to dairy safety at the source.

The General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) said it would create a "production process quality responsibility system" to cover milk from farms to the table, according to the agency's website (www.aqsiq.gov.cn).

"All raw materials and semi-finished ingredients entering plants must have a product quality report or inspection test report from the supplier to ensure substandard raw materials do not enter," the announcement said.

China's state-controlled media have avoided much comment on how officials avoided reporting to superiors or the public about the poisonings, which centre around milk powder made by the Sanlu Group, part owned by New Zealand's Fonterra Co-operative Group.

But widespread public anger about the scandal has been echoed in some newspapers.

"The Sanlu scandal is not merely a food safety incident ... it profoundly exposes the extent to which old vices die hard in food safety and the severity of the crisis in public safety," said a commentary in the widely read Southern Weekend.

DIFFICULT TASK

Despite mounting international expectations for a food safety overhaul, China's vast size and complex web of government agencies and product quality watchdogs has long made maintaining standards a problematic and herculean task.

Inconsistent regulations, poor enforcement, weak rule of law and powerful local officials and businessmen have allowed illicit operations and practices to thrive with sometimes minimal and patchy scrutiny from central authorities.

Even with official pronouncements that the melamine scandal was being controlled, evidence has grown that the industrial chemical's use may be more pervasive than previously thought.

A feedmill owner in Heilongjiang province told Reuters its use among farmers and feed-ingredient manufacturers was "rampant" in several northern provinces.

While the scandal has triggered arrests and official sackings in China, the political repercussions began to spread overseas.

Taiwan Health Minister Lin Fang-yue resigned after 25 tonnes of potentially tainted milk powder were imported to the island, the Taiwanese Central News Agency reported.

China has agreed to let long-time diplomatic and political adversary Taiwan send experts to China to discuss the scandal, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Nitrogen-rich melamine can be added to substandard or watered-down milk to fool quality checks, which often use nitrogen levels to measure the amount of protein in milk.

The chemical is used in pesticides and in making plastics.

So far, four deaths have been blamed on kidney stones and agonising complications caused by the toxic milk.

The Foreign Ministry, seeking to reassure a worried world the government is tackling the scandal, repeated that China was willing to increase cooperation with food safety departments in other parts of the world to help stop the case widening.

MORE BANS, RECALL

Despite Beijing's reassurances, more and more countries have taken steps against milk imports from China.

India on Thursday became the most populous country to announce a ban on Chinese milk and milk products, with the ban to remain in force for three months.

Thailand impounded Chinese milk products in warehouses, while Vietnam and Nepal halted sales of all Chinese milk products and would now increase testing of such imports.

France banned food items containing Chinese milk products. (Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Beijing, Tan Ee Lyn in Hong Kong, Kevin Lim in Singapore, Francois Murphy in Paris, Ho Binh Minh in Hanoi, Biman Mukherji in New Delhi, Kim Junghyun in Seoul, Gopal Sharma in Kathmandu, Aung Hla Tun in Yangon and Vithoon Amorn in Bangkok; Editing by Paul Tait)

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