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BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese court on Thursday rejected appeals by executives sentenced in a milk scandal in which at least six children died and tens of thousands were hospitalised after drinking milk adulterated with melamine.

The Hebei high court upheld the life sentence for Tian Wenhua, chairwoman of dairy firm Sanlu, who was convicted last year of manufacturing and selling fake or substandard products, state television said.

The scandal shocked Chinese consumers, caused dairy firms' sales to plummet and has led to increased regulation of food quality and safety.

Tian, who said during her trial that she had reported the tainted milk to the government in early August, appealed on grounds of lack of evidence. China did not announce the milk contamination to the public until September, after the Olympic Games were over in Beijing.

Melamine, a chemical used in fertilizer and plastics, had been added to poor quality milk by farmers and middlemen to fool protein tests. It caused kidney stones in children who drank formula made from the tainted milk.

The court also upheld sentences for other defendants from Sanlu and melamine distributors, who had been sentenced to death or life imprisonment.

A court in Shijiazhuang, the Hebei provincial capital and the headquarters for Sanlu, earlier this week accepted the first lawsuit from a family of a child poisoned by the tainted milk.

The family's lawyer, Peng Jian, is also representing the parents of five other children, one of them a one-year-old girl who died last June.