China urged the United States on?June 30?to "properly
deal with" a move restricting some Chinese seafood imports "as soon
as possible", said a top official.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said on Thursday it
would detain five types of Chinese farm-raised seafood products
unless suppliers could prove the shipments contained no harmful
residues.
In a teleconference with US Secretary of Health and Human
Services Michael Leavitt and FDA officials, Li Changjiang, minister
of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection
and Quarantine, which oversees export and import quality, urged the
US side to let the exports go through after checking the sanitation
certificates issued by China Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine
(CIQ).
Li said that China also detected many foodstuffs of shoddy
quality among the US exports to the country every year.
"With the principle of cooperation, these problems were all
properly dealt with," he said.
"Like the US exports to China, quality problems did exist among
exports from one or two individual Chinese companies," he said.
However, Li stressed that China can't "accept" the US decision
to "indiscriminately" detain all aquaculture.
China has already adopted measures to solve the problems the FDA
cited, he said.
Ministry of Commerce spokesman Wang Xinpei also urged foreign
trade partners to accept Chinese products unless they violated
contract terms or local regulations.
The US restrictions included all farm-raised catfish, basa,
shrimp, dace (related to carp) and eel from China.
The FDA said there had been no reports of illnesses to date, and
no recall order was issued.
David Acheson, the FDA's assistant commissioner for food
protection, said the step was taken due to evidence that certain
Chinese aquaculture products contained illegal substances.
An official from the Agriculture Ministry, who declined to be
named, said the US move would have "serious impacts" on China, the
world's largest producer of farmed aquatic food.
"We are keeping close watch over what the FDA wants," he
said.
He explained the requirement for evidence of safety would
inevitably increase export costs and stressed that China had
greatly improved the quality of its seafood.
(China Daily June 30, 2007)