China vows to improve food safety

by Actual News Geezer | June 20, 2007 at 07:39 am

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Everywhere you look there are stories that question the safety of Chinese food products. It may have started with pet food, but the NY Times story on how 1000's of children have been killed in developing countries by poisonous toothpaste and fever medications has opened a floodgate of concern.

Now the Chinese government has responded.

Chinese-made toothpaste has been rejected by several countries from Latin America to Asia while Chinese wheat gluten tainted with the chemical melamine was blamed for dog and cat deaths in North America.

Other products turned away by U.S. inspectors include toxic monkfish, frozen eel and juice made with unsafe color additives.

"China will speed up revisions to national and industry standards on farm produce and processed food products," Liu Pingjun, chief of the National Standardization Management Commission, said in a statement posted Wednesday on the Web site of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine.