With the current scare on melamine-contaminated milk, I'm almost thanking my lucky stars there's hardly any milk-containing food products in our household. A few pack of biscuits, a tub of ice cream in the freezer, a bar of chocolate, some cheese and yoghurt - it doesn't take long to check whether we have anything on the list of products suspected to be affected. I could even chuck the entire stuff away without shedding much tears. I'm exclusively breastfeeding my infant daughter, so there's no formula milk in the house, and although my older son has already outgrown his milk allergies, we rarely buy milk products out of habit.

I'm totally aghast, thinking of the more than 50,000 children now sick because of drinking tainted milk and I hope that the authorities can trace and recall all affected goods worldwide before more people fall ill. It'll take time and a lot of logistics to ascertain which milk-containing food items are safe and which aren't. Until then, it seems like the only 100% safe option is to avoid milk products. It'll cripple the industry,and we definitely don't want that to happen, but until they can assure the public of their products' safety, there is an un-calculated risk to consuming milk-containing products now.