China seeks to shift focus of safety woes: U.S.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - China is hunting for problems in U.S. goods instead of engaging Washington on improving its own shaky record on export safety, a senior Bush administration official complained after a visit to Beijing.

Agriculture Department Undersecretary Mark Keenum, who was in China last week for talks on trade and the unsettling discoveries of unsafe Chinese exports in recent months, heard Chinese reports about unsafe and substandard U.S. products -- from fishmeal to seafood to homing pigeons.

"Rather than having constructive dialogue, it was very frustrating to sit there and listen to how bad our products are," Keenum said on Wednesday in an interview.

The litany of Chinese complaints, Keenum said, included alleged problems with strangely colored soybeans, animal hides lacking proper documents and food like potato chips that contained unauthorized additives or was plagued with other problems.

"They're trying to turn it back on us ... I was not pleased at all with the tone or the dialogue," he added.

Reports are piling up about risky products from China. Leading toymaker Mattel recalled hundreds of thousands of lead-laced toys just this week. The news has put many American consumers on edge as they second-guess the quality of goods from a country that is now a major supplier.

The Chinese government is taking some steps, like reining in rogue exporters, but Beijing makes it sharply clear that it feels it has gotten an unfair rap.

Keenum said the meetings last week made little progress on the food and import safety front, which may bode poorly ahead of cabinet-level talks that will bring a host of Bush administration officials to Beijing in December.

In the meantime, China will send a mission next week, including Wei Chuanzhong, vice minister of China's General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, to Washington for annual talks on food safety.

STRATEGIC RELATIONSHIP

Trade ties with China are especially important for U.S. farmers as demand for food, grain and other goods explodes among China's 1.3 billion people.

China is expected to sail past the European Union to become the fourth-largest market for U.S. farm goods in fiscal 2008, and will buy an estimated $8.4 billion worth of farm goods, primarily soy and cotton.

But the two countries' economic relationship remains a complex and, at times, tense one as the two countries bicker over China's currency valuation and its large bilateral trade surplus.

The United States has also pressured China for months to change import rules for meat trade. It wants to see some tolerance for ractopamine, a growth promoter commonly used in U.S. pork production, and for salmonella in poultry exports.

But Keenum said officials did not indicate last week that China would soon do so.

Neither did the talks produce any news on the long-standing U.S. desire to resume beef exports. China's beef market has been off limits to U.S. producers since mad cow disease was discovered here in 2003.

Since the United States received a new international risk classification for beef earlier this year, Washington has been pressing Beijing to accept a broad range of meat products, from animals of all ages.