China, US move on food-safety
tensions By Abid Aslam
WASHINGTON - China and the United States
have agreed on measures to improve the safety of
Chinese exports of food and drugs after a wave of
scandals involving tainted products.
The
move could reduce tensions between the world's
biggest consumer and exporter. Beijing has cited
its own safety concerns in blocking imports of US
food, but officials and commentators here have
seen the action as retaliation for US rejection of
Chinese goods.
Chinese authorities and visiting US
officials agreed on an initial framework to
strengthen product safety standards and their
enforcement, the state-run Xinhua news agency said
on Saturday. Details of the agreement, reached
with a delegation of senior officials of the
Department of Health and Human Services and the
Food and Drug Administration (FDA), remained to be
spelled out.
Washington and Beijing sought
"to increase cooperation and information-sharing
between the US and Chinese governments on these
safety issues and, at the request of the Chinese,
to enhance the technical capacity of China's
regulatory agencies to help ensure Chinese exports
to the United States meet US safety standards",
Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt
said in an earlier statement.
China has
held similar talks with Japan and the European
Union as part of a broad effort to shore up global
confidence in the safety of its products.
Additionally, China's Commerce Ministry
said on Saturday that it had blacklisted 429
exporters for violating trade rules. Firms on the
list included two pet-food makers whose products
were found to contain chemical additives tied to
some animal deaths this year.
The Chinese
government last month executed Zheng Xiaoyu,
director of the State Food and Drug Administration
from 1998 until 2005, on corruption charges.
Authorities have closed more than 180 food plants
and arrested dozens of individuals on charges they
were involved in making counterfeit medicines.
Beijing also has announced administrative changes
designed to strengthen oversight of China's
sprawling and decentralized agricultural and
manufacturing sectors.
Chinese exports
have been in the consumer-safety spotlight since
early this year, when patients in Panama were said
to have died because of tainted medical products.
Since then, most scandals have occurred in the
United States and have involved products ranging
from seafood to toothpaste and toys.
The
US has responded by blocking imports. Most
recently, the FDA last month banned certain types
of seafood from China and said the targeted
imports contained unauthorized antibiotics.
Beijing also has cited health concerns in
suspending imports of fish and pork from seven US
companies.
China supplies more than
one-tenth of the world's fruit and vegetables and
about half of all farmed fish sold globally. It
also is a leading maker of food additives such as
xanthan gum and ascorbic acid; medicines,
pharmaceutical ingredients, and medical devices;
and consumer goods such as toys and furniture. In
the US and elsewhere, Chinese products are the
lifeblood of companies and consumers looking to
keep down costs.
Much of China's food and
drug exports originate on small farms and
factories dotted about the countryside and
regulated by local authorities. Officials in
Beijing have said greater central government
oversight is needed to ensure that all products
are brought up to uniform high standards.
Even so, Chinese officials and academics
quoted on the government website also have said
that trading partners apply double standards to
protect domestic producers, by holding imports to
higher specifications than products made or grown
at home. They have charged that problems with
their country's exports have been overstated to
appease protectionists and they have urged global
cooperation to improve product safety, saying
tainted goods come from all over the world.
In the past 12 months, the FDA has
rejected 1,901 shipments of food or cosmetics from
China. During the same period, its inspectors
threw out 1,787 shipments from India and 1,560
from Mexico, for a total of 3,347 from the second-
and third-largest violators of US import
standards.
The US regulator also has
blocked goods from wealthy nations, including
shipments of candy from Denmark.
US
producers have not been immune to scandal. In the
past year, nationwide food-poisoning outbreaks
have been tied to domestic spinach, spring onions,
and peanut butter. Last month, a California-based
firm retracted some 75,000 tons of hamburger meat
as unsafe for human consumption.
Food
scares and scandals have served to highlight
problems in the US regulatory system. Last week,
the FDA said it had suspended plans to close seven
laboratories around the country after critics in
Congress and advocacy groups said the closures
would cripple a system already struggling to weed
out unsafe products before they reach consumers.
Further changes will await the recommendations of
a high-level panel charged with finding ways to
strengthen safeguards.
Meanwhile,
developing countries and other US trading partners
continue to press their own concerns about the
safety of US food exports. Mexico and others have
questioned the widespread use of genetically
modified crops. South Korea and others have
rebuffed US beef amid fears of bovine spongiform
encephalopathy (mad cow disease).
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