Fonterra says it did not deliberately choose not to warn its Taiwan consumers that poisoned milkpowder might be going into their foods.

Fonterra's Taiwan ingredients subsidiary, imported a one-off trial shipment of 25 tonnes of milkpowder from Fonterra's joint venture on the mainland, Sanlu, about June 14.

A Fonterra spokesman said today that Fonterra Ingredients Taiwan, notified customers and began recalling the product on September 12, when notified of the contamination of Sanlu infant formula with melamine.

"The next day Taiwanese health authorities advised the public of the recall".

Fonterra's chief executive Andrew Ferrier this week repeatedly said that in China the company tried to "do the right thing" by working within the Chinese system once Fonterra directors were alerted to the poisoned milk on August 2.

He said Fonterra advised a public recall, but the Chinese directors and the local bureaucracy wanted a "trade recall" without going public, and that Fonterra judged this path was going to be most effective in getting contaminated product off shop shelves.

But asked today why Fonterra did not recall the product it imported into Taiwan -- where it did not have the complications which apparently constrained its actions on the mainland -- company spokesman Graeme McMillan said the shipment had "slipped through" when Sanlu was doing its recall.

"They were focussed on the infant formula, to start with. This was very small -- literally one containerload of bulk milk powder".

"I'm not going to make excuses -- it slipped through the net. As soon as we (Fonterra head office) were notified, we recalled it", Mr McMillan said.

On September 17, 25 percent of the product was still missing.

Taiwan's health minister, Lin Fang-yue, told the Taipei Times potentially toxic milkpowder had been sold to 10 distributors in nine cities and counties in Taiwan, and some may have been processing into foods such as coffee powders.

"We are concerned that some of the finished products -- made from the milk powder -- have been sold to consumers," the minister said.

Asked if Fonterra delayed telling Taiwanese consumers they were being fed contaminated milkpowder, Mr Ferrier said yesterday:

"Fonterra did not knowingly delay any announcement in Taiwan".