MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

EU urges China more surveillance about product safety

The European Union urged China on Monday to be more vigilant about product safety, from toothpaste to pet food, and to provide more information about the measures it takes against manufacturers of fake or shoddy exports.

EU Consumer Commissioner Meglena Kuneva made the request during talks in Beijing with Li Changjiang, head of China's product safety watchdog, the General Administration for Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine. Kuneva encouraged China to make greater efforts to improve its market surveillance to prevent dangerous products ending up in the EU and to help improve China's reputation as an exporter. "There is an improvement, but also it's equally valid that there is need of more step up of the reforms on the market and on the market surveillance," Kuneva told reporters after the meeting. In 2006, 924 products were identified as too dangerous to be sold in the 27 European Union nations, plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. China was the country of origin in almost half of all those cases. "For product safety, China is the No. 1 concern," said Kuneva's spokeswoman Helen Kearns. Officials said this reflects China's dominance as a supplier of toys, small electronics and lighting and overall trade flows since over a quarter of all goods the EU imports are from China. More than a half of all toys sold in Europe come from China and the EU has been working specifically to increase toy safety with Chinese authorities and manufacturers by offering training to explain what the EU is looking for. The 'Roadmap for safer toys' was signed in September last year. China and the European Union signed a cooperation agreement in January 2006 on product safety that gave China access to RAPEX, an EU database of product alerts and recalls. Beijing agreed to take corrective action when the products concerned were of Chinese origin. In 2005, 80 percent of all notifications regarding toys involved Chinese-made toys, which the commission believes is "disproportionately high and a cause for concern," Kearns said. Fears abroad over Chinese-made drugs were sparked last year by the deaths of dozens of people in Panama who took medicine contaminated with diethylene glycol. The U.S. and other countries have cracked down on Chinese products since the Food and Drug Administration found in April that North American dogs and cats had been poisoned by tainted Chinese pet food ingredients. Since then, a growing number of Chinese products have been found to contain potentially toxic chemicals and other adulterants. Chinese officials have accused foreign media of raising unnecessary alarm about the safety of the country's food and drug exports, and the issue was brought up again during Monday's meeting. "Recently some countries have criticized the quality of China's exports," Li told Kuneva. "I think some criticisms have been justified, some not. But anyway, as a responsible government and country, China will try to improve its work in order to guarantee the quality of our exported products