Brussels, Belgium — The European Union moved to ban imports of dairy based Chinese food products yesterday, including biscuits, sweets, and chocolate, aimed at children or infants amid a growing global health scare over contaminated milk from China.

New “precautionary” restrictions imposed by the European Commission will come into force on Friday along with tighter E.U. border checks on all Chinese food products entering Europe.

“The measures will also impose an exclusive, total ban all products originating from China for infants and young children, containing any percentage of milk,” a Commission spokesman said.

New tests will be carried out on all imported goods from China containing more than 50% of milk powder and random sampling will now be carried out on all such products already on the E.U. market and supermarket shelves.

The E.U. does not import milk or dairy products from China but there are growing fears over products such as chocolate, sweets, and biscuits that may contain milk products.

The new E.U. measures are preventative and officials have stressed that increased controls imposed last week failed to find any food imports contaminated with abnormal levels of the industrial chemical melamine, which has been blamed for making 53,000 babies in China ill and killing four.

“We are taking the measure for a precaution,” the Commission said.

“We have not detected any contaminated products within the EU.”

A report by E.U. food safety experts yesterday ruled out any risk to adults from Chinese food imports but did caution children could be endangered by consuming products with levels of contamination similar to the highest levels found in China.

The European Food Safety Agency, based in Parma, warned that children eating large amounts of Chinese food products containing milk could in theoretically exceed the safe intake of melamine by more than threefold, while noting there was no evidence such high levels of contamination were present in Europe.

A spokesman for Britain’s Food Standards Agency, said: “We would emphasis that EFSA’s overall assessment is that the risk to health from products such as biscuits and chocolates that may contain tainted milk is low. We are also well placed to take action if any products are identified in the U.K. as a risk to consumers.”

The Tesco supermarket chain has pulled Chinese-made White Rabbit Creamy Candies off shelves amid reports that samples of the product in Singapore and New Zealand had tested positive for melamine.

France on Wednesday announced it was going further by banning the sale of all goods containing derivatives of Chinese dairy products.