GENEVA?Swiss food giant Nestle on Monday insisted its products were not made with milk tainted by industrial chemical melamine, after Hong Kong authorities ordered a recall of one of its UHT milk brands.

"Nestle is confident that none of its products in China is made from milk adulterated with melamine," it said in a statement.

The group was referring to the Hong Kong government's decision to recall the Nestle Dairy Farm UHT Pure Milk product after discovering traces of melamine in samples from Heilongjiang, and stressed that the product was "not made from" tainted milk.

It said that Hong Kong subsequently issued new rules, limiting melamine levels in food products for adults at under 2.5 mg per liter and those for infants under 36 months at below 1 mg per liter.

"The values allegedly found in Nestle Dairy Farm UHT Pure Milk, which is for adult consumption, are lower than these new standards. This further strengthens our statement that this product is absolutely safe to consume," said the group.

When ordering the recall on Sunday, Hong Kong authorities had acknowledged that normal consumption of the product would not pose major health effects, due to the low level of melamine.

"However, it is not advisable for small children to consume the milk product. We have informed the trade of the test results and asked them to stop selling and to recall the product concerned," a spokesman for the center said then.

On Monday, Hong Kong supermarket chain Wellcome said it emptied its shelves of all milk powder products from Nestle, plastic-bottled Dutch Lady milk, and canned Mr Brown coffee, following reports they were tainted with melamine.

Up to 53,000 children have been taken to hospital in China after drinking milk thought to have been contaminated by melamine.

Most had "basically recovered" after developing kidney stones, the main symptom of drinking the tainted milk, but 12,892 of them remained in hospital, a health ministry official told Agence France-Presse.