China Zeroes in on Food and Drug Safety

A Chinese woman sits at a pet store offering a variety of dog food options, both local and imported, in Beijing Friday, May 4, 2007. The exporter of a contaminated pet food ingredient blamed for the deaths of up to thousands of cats and dogs in the United States may have avoided Chinese export inspections by labeling it as a nonfood product, a U.S. government report says. Reports said Xuzhou Anying's manager, Mao Lijun, may have been detained by Chinese authorities, claims that could not immediately be confirmed on Thursday, which was a public holiday in China. (AP Photo/Elizabeth Dalziel) (Elizabeth Dalziel - AP)

Calls to the companies were not answered and police refused to comment. Detention center phone numbers were not listed.

Separately, the State Council, or Cabinet, said the nationwide food safety crackdown would compel companies to adopt "standards used in food-importing countries ... and test products which will be used to make animal feed or food for humans."

The government must "strengthen its investigations into protein products, especially melamine," the notice said.

It said all classes of food and drug would be subject to more rigorous inspections, with an emphasis on securing the food supply chain and boosting food safety in the vast, mostly impoverished countryside.

In Washington, the FDA's commissioner, Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach, and Chinese Ambassador Zhou Wenzhong told two lawmakers Wednesday they would work toward a mutual agreement to improve inspections and the overall safety of food products and drugs traded between the U.S. and China.

That agreement would likely take the form of a memorandum of understanding between the two governments, said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who convened the meeting with Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn.

U.S. officials say they don't believe melamine to be harmful to humans, but say they have too little data to determine how it reacts with other substances.

The FDA says it is particularly concerned about the combination of melamine with cyanuric acid, a similar chemical usually used to help keep swimming pools clean but sometimes used as a feed additive. Some American scientists have suggested that combination may have led to the pet deaths through kidney failure.

Sales managers at four Chinese chemical companies said they were unaware of cyanuric acid's use as a feed additive, although two others said they had heard of the practice but didn't know how widespread it was.

"As far as I know, it is seldom used in animal feed," said Chai Zhixian, a salesman with Shanghai Experimental Reagent Co.

The Chinese agency that sets regulator standards for food and drug safety has been in disarray for years. Its director, Zheng Xiaoyu, was dismissed in 2005 and has since been accused of taking up to $780,000 in bribes to approve untested medicines, including an antibiotic that killed at least 10 patients.

Zheng is scheduled to go on trial in mid-May, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

The general administration said it checked on 173 exporters in 11 provinces and cities following the FDA's melamine investigation, but found no other signs of tainting after tests on 399 samples, as well as related products, such as processed meats and milk powder.