Milk giant Bright Dairy acknowledged irregularities at one of its plants Monday, but denied using expired milk in its products.

Bright Dairy made the announcement about two weeks after media reports alleged that the company's plant in Henan Province used expired milk in its products.

"Bright Dairy has been cleared of using expired milk. But the incident exposed problems in the company's management," Bright Dairy's chairperson Wang Jiafen was quoted in the announcement as saying.

Bright Dairy said its Henan branch didn't use expired dairy products acquired from the market. Instead, it used "stock" that had not expired.

An inspection team from the Zhengzhou Municipal Government confirmed this.

Song Kungang, head of China's Milk Industry Association, said it was "absolutely unacceptable" to re-use stock to make dairy products.

A lawyer in Shanghai surnamed Wu said that according to State quality regulations, food enterprises are not to use recycled material in food production.

In another development, Bright Dairy's Shanghai plant was found to have wrongly labeled its products -- items produced on June 13 were labeled June 15.

(Shenzhen Daily June 22, 2005)