HONG KONG, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Health officials in China's northeast Jilin province are investigating the source of a batch of eggs found to have been contaminated with melamine in tests conducted by a Hong Kong lab, state media reported on Thursday.

The Centre for Food Safety said the eggs from Jilin's Dehui City were found to contain 4.7 parts per million (ppm), nearly twice Hong Kong's legal limit.

An emergency investigative group, to be led by Dehui City's vice mayor Zhao Wenbo, has been established to probe the Jiayuan Farm Produce and By-Products Trading Co. which produced the eggs, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Sixty boxes of eggs along with feed samples from the farm have been taken for testing by Jilin's Provincial Bureau of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, though results aren't yet available, Xinhua added.

Last month Hong Kong health officials discovered a batch of melamine-tainted eggs from China's Dalian province.

The melamine scandal is believed to have killed six babies in China and affected close to 300,000 children who consumed tainted milk and other dairy products. They suffered from a range of ailments including kidney stones.

The scandal has undermined confidence in the country's food exports. Dozens of countries consuming products with Chinese dairy ingredients have undertaken bans, recalls or strict checks.

(Reporting by James Pomfret; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

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