China calls for more testing of exports

[June 07, 2007]  BEIJING (AP) -- China has released food and drug safety goals for the next five years, promising stronger surveillance and export controls that officials say will help improve China's international image and relations.

Li Changjiang, head of China's main food safety agency, said stricter measures were a "political responsibility" that all levels of government must take.

His remarks came as the State Council, China's Cabinet, outlined its strategy to make food safety the "starting point and destination of all works."

"Food safety is not only a problem related to law enforcement, but also related to the people's health and safety, the country's image, and also bilateral and multilateral political relationships," said Li, director of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine.

He spoke last week during an inspection tour of Shenzhen city in booming Guangdong province near Hong Kong, and his comments were posted on the agency's online site late Tuesday.

Both Li and Wei Chuanzhong, the administration's deputy director, outlined measures that need to be imposed to guarantee the safety of exported food -- including better inspections at food sources and ports, more random sample testing, and greater cooperation with the United States.

They also called for better law enforcement, and said those ignoring safety rules will be punished.

No other details of the measures were given. A woman who answered the telephone Wednesday at the agency's press department said that her supervisor was unavailable, and that she had "no idea" about the issue.

In the past few months, U.S. inspectors have banned or turned away a growing number of Chinese exports, including wheat gluten tainted with the chemical melamine, which has been blamed for dog and cat deaths in North America.

Monkfish containing life-threatening levels of pufferfish toxins were discovered, as were drug-laced frozen eel, and juice made with unsafe color additives.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has also stopped all imports of Chinese toothpaste to test for a deadly chemical reportedly found in tubes sold in Australia, the Dominican Republic and Panama.

Singapore has banned three types of China-made toothpaste after tests showed they contained a poisonous chemical.

"Recently, our country has had a series of export food problems, and that has triggered a lot of overseas attention about China's food safety," Wei said in a separate posting on the online site. "This has put us on high alert and led us to seriously look into the reasons for the problems."

Last week, the quality control administration announced plans to implement its first recall system for unsafe products by the end of the year.

The country's former top drug regulator also was sentenced to death in an unusually harsh punishment for taking bribes to approve substandard medicines, including an antibiotic blamed for at least 10 deaths.

The actions were among the most dramatic steps Beijing has publicly taken to address domestic and international concern over unsafe Chinese goods.

Within China, food safety also has been a recurring problem. The Health Ministry reported almost 34,000 food-related illnesses in 2005.

A five-year plan released in April, but posted on the State Council's online site late Tuesday, outlined plans to step up national inspections, surveillance and investigations of "major food safety incidents," as well as recall efforts for bad products.

It also promised to control "criminal activities of producing and selling shoddy food and drugs."

For exported food, "a system should be set up to electronically monitor ... enterprises. A system should be established to trace and recall exported food with quality problems, as well as blacklist for food importing and exporting enterprises."

No other details on the plan were released. The State Council did not immediately respond to a list of faxed questions.

[Text copied from Associated Press file]