Abid Aslam
WASHINGTON, Aug 6 2007 (IPS) – China and the United States have agreed on measures to improve the safety of Chinese exports of food and drugs following a wave of scandals involving tainted products.
The move could defuse tensions between the world s biggest consumer and exporter. Beijing has cited its own safety concerns in blocking imports of U.S. food but officials and commentators here have seen the action as retaliation for U.S. rejection of Chinese goods.
Chinese authorities and visiting U.S. officials agreed on an initial framework to strengthen product safety standards and their enforcement, the state-run Xinhua news agency said Saturday. Details of the agreement, reached with a delegation of senior officials of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and Food and Drug Administration (FDA), remained to be spelled out.
Washington and Beijing sought to increase cooperation and information sharing between the U.S. 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 U.S. 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 Saturday 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 U.S. animal deaths earlier this year.
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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 some 180-plus food factories 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 decentralised 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 U.S. has responded by blocking imports. Most recently, the FDA last month banned imports of certain types of seafood from China and said the targeted imports contained unauthorised antibiotics.
Beijing also has cited health concerns in suspending imports of fish and pork from seven U.S. 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 United States and elsewhere, Chinese products are the lifeblood of companies and consumers looking to keep down their 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 Web site 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 U.S. 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 U.S. import standards.
The U.S. regulator also has blocked goods from other wealthy nations, including shipments of candy from Denmark.
U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. trading partners continue to press their own concerns about the safety of U.S. food exports. Mexico and others have questioned U.S. producers widespread use of genetically modified crops. South Korea and others have rebuffed U.S. beef amid fears of mad cow disease.
