China draws up export blacklist amid health scares

BEIJING, Aug 4 (Reuters) China has blacklisted more than 400 exporters for violating trade rules following a series of food, drug and other health scares across thr world, the Commerce Ministry said.

The list included two pet food manufacturers that had exported to the United States. Washington stepped up inspections of imports from China after a chemical additive in pet food caused the death of some pets there earlier this year.

Since then, poisonous ingredients have been found in Chinese exports of toys, toothpaste and fish, while the deaths of patients in Panama was blamed on improperly labelled Chinese chemicals that were mixed into cough syrup.

In the latest scare, US toy maker Mattel Inc said on Wednesday that it was recalling 1.5 million Chinese-made toys worldwide because their paint may contain too much lead.

Chinese Vice Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng stressed the government line that Chinese products were overwhelmingly safe and of high quality, and called on foreign media not to hype the problems of a small minority of goods or companies.

But on the ministry Web site, he said 429 Chinese firms on the blacklist had been punished for violating export regulations. The Web site did not elaborate.

''China will strengthen international cooperation on the safety of products,'' Gao was quoted as saying.

China said yesterday it had banned seafood imports from Indonesia because many contained ''toxic substances'', Xinhua said.

A delegation of US officials in Beijing hammered out ''basic frameworks'' for two agreements seeking to reassure US consumers that Chinese-made goods met safety standards, Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt said yesterday.

China, where the former drug and food safety watchdog chief was executed last month for corruption, has also cancelled the licences of six medicine manufacturers.

The China Daily said 270 ''on-the-spot drug test'' vans would soon hit the roads of rural China to weed out counterfeit drugs.

Reuters RN GC1345