Good news…sort of. How much seafood was actually imported from China before these improvements in its quality were demanded? This report was found at HealthDay.

The Chinese government says it will cooperate with U.S. regulators to improve the safety of food imported to the United States, but its response to the latest partial ban by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on imported seafood was far from humble.

Dr. David Acheson, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s assistant commissioner for food protection, Thursday identified the banned fish as catfish, basa (similar to catfish), shrimp, dace (similar to carp) and eel, which he said may contain chemicals that are potentially carcinogenic.

The New York Times reports that the Chinese government said Friday that it would work with the United States to improve the quality of food it imports, but it urged a quick resolution and claimed that U.S. food imports to China also had quality problems. “Just like the U.S. imported food in China, there are quality problems with aquatic products that are exported to the U.S. by some Chinese enterprises,” the Times quotes a statement on a Chinese government Web site.

China is the third largest importer of seafood to the United States, and the problem of quality is not a new one. “There have been problems with farmed fish products produced in China and exported to the U.S. since 2001,” Margaret O’ K. Glavin, FDA’s associate commissioner for Regulatory Affairs, said Thursday during a teleconference. For example, in 2006, the FDA placed a countrywide alert on all Chinese eel due to residues of malachite green, Glavin said.


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