Milk products made by Yili and Mengniu, along with those of many other leading Chinese brands, were last month found to contain melamine, an industrial chemical normally used to make plastics.

"The milk stations that had problems were the ones run by individuals," said Pan Gang, President of Yili, speaking as he toured one of his factories in the northern region of Inner Mongolia which is one of China's dairy heartlands.

"Since September (when the scandal came to light), all the milk we have taken in has been controlled by us."

Mengniu's President Yang Wenjun also laid the blame on milk stations, speaking at a press conference at his company's headquarters.

"Those that added melamine into milk were in a few milk stations," Yang said, adding that government checks had found that no company was involved in putting the chemical in milk.

The tainted milk scandal emerged when melamine was discovered in powdered milk produced by Sanlu, another dairy company. More than 20 Chinese dairy firms were subsequently found to have produced tainted milk.

Four babies died and at least 53,000 others have fallen ill after consuming tainted milk products, according to official figures.

Melamine was mixed into milk to give it the appearance of having a higher protein content but the chemical can cause kidney problems, especially in babies.

The mayor of Hohhot, Inner Mongolia's capital, backed Yili and Mengniu, which is also based there.

"There were some people that added the melamine in at milk stations," Tang Aijun told reporters.

"It has nothing to do with the two companies' production process or management."

Around 40 people have been arrested in China for their involvement in the scandal, including six in Hohhot.

Tang said three of the Hohhot suspects had added melamine in milk at the collection stations, and the others were suspected of selling the chemical.

Jin Biao, vice president of Yili, said all milk produced by his company was now safe after a series of checks and safety measures over the past month.

"We guarantee that all the milk produced by Yili is 100 percent up to standard."

Meanwhile, the government of Inner Mongolia said it was looking into ways to avoid this type of problem happening again.

Ren Yaping, vice chairman of the local government, said that officials and businesses were thinking of gathering all farmers or their cows together in one place to avoid the problem of intermediary milk stations.

"The biggest lesson we should learn from this is that it's difficult to control all milk source providers in thousands of households," Ren said.

"The process of milk production is very modern, but the milk source is still very much based on individual households, so the next step should be to have all these individual households gathered together so it's easier to control."

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