BEIJING (AP) — A team of U.S. health officials arrived in Beijing yesterday for talks on tightening controls over food and drug trade, amid tensions triggered by U.S. restrictions on questionable — and sometimes dangerous — Chinese products.
China complains that some recent U.S. actions against its exports have been unnecessary and blames the international media for blowing concerns about its product-safety record out of proportion.
The U.S. delegation, led by Department of Health and Human Services official Rich McKeown, will discuss ways to improve the flow of information and devise regulations both sides can be confident in, HHS Secretary Michael O. Leavitt said in a statement issued prior to the group’s arrival.
As the delegation arrived, U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. was meeting separately with Chinese officials in hopes of defusing congressional demands for sanctions over currency and trade disputes, but a key leader said Beijing already is taking action and is constrained by poverty.
Analysts say Mr. Paulson is unlikely to win any Chinese concessions but hopes to return to Washington with an upbeat status report to stave off pressure for sanctions over Beijing’s currency controls and soaring trade surplus with the United States.
Mr. Paulson held talks with China’s central bank governor and was due to meet President Hu Jintao today.
The health team will focus on developing agreements on the safety of food, drugs and medical devices, hopefully to be completed by December.
“Our U.S. regulatory agencies are concerned about what they see as an insufficient infrastructure across the board in China to assure the safety, quality and effectiveness of many products exported to the United States,” Mr. Leavitt said in the statement.
“We believe that with the technology, the scientific expertise, and the commitment each side has, we can work together to correct the outstanding issues,” he said.
The U.S. Embassy in Beijing confirmed the arrival of the delegation but did not give any details on the itinerary or agenda for the five-day visit.
An official with China’s General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, the chief body for monitoring product safety, said yesterday that a vice minister will meet the U.S. team.
Chinese officials have said the talks would also focus on U.S. restrictions imposed on fish imports including catfish, shrimp and eel imposed after repeated testing turned up contamination with drugs that have not been approved in the U.S. for farmed seafood.
In June, China criticized the new restrictions as “indiscriminate” and “unacceptable” and urged closer cooperation on food safety between the two sides.
Last month, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang warned the press against exaggerating China’s food-safety problems and stirring consumer panic.
International worries about Chinese exports were triggered earlier this year when a pet food ingredient from China was linked to the deaths of cats and dogs in North America.
Since then, a growing list of Chinese exports — including toothpaste, tires and seafood — have been recalled or rejected around the world.
But in recent weeks, Chinese authorities have prominently announced their own rejections of imports from the United States, including orange pulp, dried apricots, raisins and health supplements.
The safety scandals have put at risk surging Chinese agricultural exports to the United States, which reached $2.26 billion last year, led by poultry products, sausage casings, shellfish, spices and apple juice.
The visit by U.S. health officials takes place a week after the European Union’s top consumer official paid a five-day visit to China and urged the leadership to stick to its commitment to be more transparent about actions it takes against manufacturers who make goods recalled in Europe.
In May, U.S. officials met with China for the second round of Strategic Economic Dialogue talks, where they also discussed food safety. Mr. Leavitt said the two countries are committed to a series of bilateral discussions on the subject.
Mr. Leavitt said the information his office gathers this week will contribute to the recommendations the Working Group on Import Safety, which he chairs, will make to President Bush next month.
Chinese leaders and officials, initially unwilling to address the problem, have in recent days aggressively publicized efforts to improve surveillance and crack down on the country’s countless small, unregulated factories, which are at the heart of China’s ongoing product-safety woes.
The latest warning came over the weekend from California, where officials cautioned consumers in the northern part of the state not to eat ginger imported from China because it might contain a dangerous pesticide — aldicarb sulfoxide — which is not approved for use on ginger in California.
The California Department of Public Health said it had received no reports of illness from customers who ate the contaminated ginger.
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