In China, the U.S. opens food-inspection office
The FDA field office is the first of three to be opened in the nation and is meant to boost consumer confidence in products coming from China.
Amid recurring Chinese product-safety scares, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration today opened an inspection office in Beijing that officials said would help China to export safer products to America and the world.
The new FDA field office, one of three to be launched nationwide here, is the first outside the U.S. and comes during a nadir in U.S. consumer confidence in Chinese-made products following reports of counterfeit drugs, melamine-laced milk and toys covered in potentially lethal lead paint.
U.S.Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt told a gathering of Chinese product manufacturers here that the U.S. hopes to work with China as part of a global product-safety strategy that would eventually involve opening similar inspection offices in India, South America, Europe and the Middle East.
“This is not about China and the U.S.,” Leavitt said. “This is about a response to a large shift in global trading patterns. We have to invent solutions to problems that didn’t exist 15 years ago.”
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