BEIJING (AP) -- China's health minister said Wednesday that tainted milk formula has killed three Chinese babies and sickened 6,200 in a spreading scandal that prompted three additional companies — including China's biggest dairy — to recall products.

Officials said that about 20 percent of the dairy companies tested nationwide had sold products tainted with melamine. Suppliers to the companies are thought to have added the banned chemical, normally used in plastics, to raw milk to make the milk appear higher in protein.
The companies included Mengniu Dairy, China's biggest milk company, which said Wednesday it was recalling its baby formula after government tests found melamine in the product. The announcement said the recall covers three batches of formula made in January but gave no details on how much product will be affected. It did not say whether any of Mengniu's baby formula was exported.
Health Minister Chen Zhu told a televised news conference that 6,244 babies had been sickened after being feed tainted milk formula, and that 158 were suffering from acute kidney failure.
The head of China's quality watchdog, Li Changjiang, said that in addition to the company at the heart of the food scandal, Sanlu Group Co., and Mengniu, two other companies, Guangdong-based Yashili and Qingdao-based Suncare, were recalling their products.
The General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine had already reported that its inspectors had found melamine ""in 69 batches of milk powder manufactured by 22 companies.""
The nationwide inspection by China's quality watchdog agency took test samples from 109 companies that produce baby milk powder in China. Li said another 66 companies had stopped production before the melamine problem emerged.
Yashili exported its products to Bangladesh, Yemen and Myanmar, but AQSIQ said initial testing of samples of the company's exports turned up no trace of melamine.
In Hong Kong, food inspectors ordered a recall after melamine was found in an ice cream bar made by Shanghai Yili AB Foods. The amounts of the chemical found ""would not pose major health effects from normal consumption of the bar, however, small children should not eat it,"" the Center for Food Safety said in a notice posted on its Web site.
It is the second crisis to raise questions about government accountability in China since the image-boosting Beijing Olympics ended Aug. 24. At least 258 people died last week when a retaining wall of a waste dump at an illegal mine in northern China collapsed.
The widening scandal is an embarrassing failure for China's product safety system, which was overhauled to restore consumer confidence and preserve export markets after a string of recalls and warnings abroad last year over tainted toothpaste, faulty tires and other goods.
It is the second major case in recent years involving baby formula. In 2004, more than 200 Chinese infants suffered malnutrition and at least 12 died after being fed phony formula that contained no nutrients.
Zhang Zhenling, Sanlu's vice president, has apologized but did not explain why the company took so long to inform the public about the contamination despite receiving complaints as early as March and having tests confirm the presence of the chemical in early August.
The company went public last week with the information after its New Zealand stakeholder, Fonterra, told the New Zealand government, which then informed the Chinese government.
Sanlu's General Manager Tian Wenhua was fired and dismissed from the company's board of directors as a result of the scandal, the official Xinhua News Agency quoted Communist Party officials as saying in the northern city of Shijiazhuang in Hebei province, where the company is based.