A Sino-US joint venture milk company was not responsible for the death of a girl who was among several thousand school children taken ill after drinking its product, said a disputed initial report.

According to the Anshan city government in Liaoning Province, the death of 12-year-old Li Yang, who died about two weeks after drinking the soya milk at school in Haicheng of Northeast China's Liaoning Province, was caused by carbon monoxide.

Li is the only person confirmed dead after about 4,900 students from eight elementary schools in Haicheng drank the milk on March 19. Many of them became sick afterwards.

Some parents claimed that at least three students had died due to the soya milk but the claim could not be confirmed yet.

The outcome of the initial investigation was released at the weekend.

"We definitely do not accept the result," Li's father said. "We were in the same room as our daughter that night. If she died due to absorbing carbon monoxide, then how come there was nothing wrong with us?"

Despite the Anshan government saying Li's death was not related to the soya milk, it said the Anshan Baorun Milk Company's product did cause illness among more than 2,500 primary school students.

The milk was selected by Haicheng's Tiexi District Educational Commission for consumption by students.

City government sources said the cause of the students' various illnesses is not yet known.

Experts sent by the Ministry of Health are in Haicheng looking into the matter.

Four scientists from the ministry and the Chinese Center for Disease Prevention and Control arrived in Shenyang, capital of Liaoning, last week and began collecting data in Shenyang, Anshan and Haicheng, particularly samples from the milk factory.

All of the experts will carry out independent investigations, a Ministry of Health official said.

The Haicheng government has promised to pay all of the students' medical fees before the final result is released.

It is the second soya milk poisoning case in Liaoning Province in six months.

In September, students from 17 schools in Lingyuan got sick after drinking milk from a factory in Chaoyang.

(China Daily April 14, 2003)