However, Taiwan's Department of Health (DOH) stipulates that foods containing dairy ingredients, creamers and vegetable-based proteins are allowed on the market only if they test negative for the toxic chemical using the sensitive LC-MS/MS technique.

LC-MS/MS, liquid chromatography/tandem mass, is a technique with a detection limit for melamine of 0.05 ppm, according to the DOH.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration uses LC-MS/MS methods that are capable of determining melamine at levels of 0.25 ppm (parts per million) in powdered infant formula, for which there is a stricter standard, and other dairy-containing food products or ingredients.

“We're not encouraging people to close the level down as low as they can impossibly go," said an FDA expert, adding that there are no safety concerns with 2.5 ppm of melamine in foods.

Experts invited by the DOH to attend the conference said earlier that a maximum level of 2.5 ppm of melamine in food is acceptable, but that background contamination levels need to be determined.

Bonnie Sun Pan, a professor at the Department of Food Science, National Taiwan Ocean University, told reporters that the

international experts did not discuss whether Taiwan's safety standard for melamine was too strict.

But Sung Yen-jen, DOH deputy minister, said earlier that his agency had no immediate plans to change the standard.

Taiwan's safety standard for melamine levels in food caused controversy in late September when then-DOH Minister Lin Fang-yue raised it to 2.5 ppm amid a food scare over contaminated milk products imported from China. Lin later resigned, mainly because of the public outcry over his decision.

The current DOH minister, Yeh Ching-chuan, immediately after taking office, decided that food products containing dairy and non- dairy ingredients must test negative for melamine using the LC-MS/MS technique if they are to be allowed on the market.