China says the US should fix its own food supply issues and stop picking on China. The Chinese government issued a statement saying that they are trying to fix food export issues but that the US should fix its own issues first.

According to the Washington Post, the statement spoke about contamination in local foods as well as “flawed” exports of pork and poultry.

From the Washington Post:

U.S. news reports are exaggerating the significance of adulteration in products exported to the United States, the statement said, and more than 99 percent of U.S. imports from China were without flaws.

The statement, issued only in Washington, did not mention moves in the United States to protect imports, including a new Working Group on Import Safety established Wednesday by President Bush. The administration denied that the panel was to target China.

The Chinese side hopes that the U.S. side will respect science and treat China’s food and drug exports fairly, will not exaggerate or play up individual food safety cases and still less (create a) ‘China threat’ in the field of food and drugs,” the statement said.

Such activities, it said, form “the misimpression among the U.S. public that all food and drugs imported from China are unsafe.”

There is no doubt that the FDA and USDA are broken, but it’s just so much easier to pick on China.

Here’s our favorite example of how dumb our food safety system is in the US. There is a different agency in charge of inspecting open faced vs closed faced sandwiches.

Yes. Seriously.

China Says US Food Has Its Own Problems [Washington Post]
(Photo:Ayier)

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