Sept. 14 (Bloomberg) -- China said talks with the U.S. on food-safety standards will resume on Sept. 17 in Beijing as the two countries seek to defuse trade tensions over food and product quality.

The four-day meeting will discuss standards including those for drugs that have been the cause of bans on pork from the U.S. and seafood from China, said Wang Daning, director general of the Import and Export Food Safety Bureau of the country's top quality regulator.

``Many of the recent food quality problems have been created by the differing standards'' between China, the U.S. and the European Union, Wang told reporters yesterday at the Beijing headquarters of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine.

China faces growing pressure to ensure the safety of its exports after scares that led to recalls in the U.S. of harmful toys, poisonous pet food and defective tires. China's ban on some imports of U.S. pork and chicken added to tensions that threaten the two countries' $343 billion trade relationship.

Health and Human Services Chief of Staff Rich McKeown led a delegation to Beijing last month resulting in an offer by the U.S. to help Chinese companies meet U.S. food-safety rules. That round and next week's meetings are aimed at establishing joint plans on food, livestock feed, drug and medical-device safety by December.

China initiated a labeling system on Sept. 1 that certifies all batches of food exports that have been inspected by the quality watchdog.

First Step

The move is the first step toward a traceability system that will allow China to implement food recalls ``as soon as possible,'' Wang said. China last month released rules for domestic food and toy recalls.

``We need to put this system in place because we need to take responsibility when there's a problem,'' he said.

The government has assigned another 300 people to conduct inspections at ports, adding to the 7,000 personnel employed to monitor the safety of food exports and imports, he said.

China's food exports rose 13.3 percent to 24.2 million tons last year, and were valued at $26.7 billion. Imports rose 7.9 percent to 20.3 million tons for a value of $13.4 billion, according to a government white paper released in August. The country exported $344 billion of consumer goods last year.

Recalls of Chinese consumer goods by U.S. companies have almost tripled in the last three months, with products worth $430 million pulled off shelves since June 6, up from $152 million a year earlier, according to figures compiled from U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission data.

Safety Concern

``Right now, the sentiment among U.S. consumers is `we don't want any Chinese products in the U.S. because they're not safe,' whether it's toys or pet food or people food,'' James Sumner, president of the USA Poultry & Egg Export Council, said in an interview this week.

He warned the U.S. can't afford to politicize the issue, given the size of the Chinese market and the potential for trade retaliation. ``We don't want to be the victim of that retaliation.''

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced on June 28 that it will detain imports of five types of seafood from China because of residues of drugs not approved in the U.S.

China in July and August blocked imports of pork from U.S. processing plants including facilities owned by Cargill Meat Solutions Corp., a unit of Cargill Inc., and Smithfield Foods Inc. The meat contained ractopamine, a growth enhancer legal in the U.S. but not in China.

Technical Nature

Harmonizing U.S. and Chinese standards will take time due to the need for scientific evidence to support regulatory change, Wang said.

In the case of seafood, one of the antibiotics cited by the FDA is legal for human use in both the U.S. and China, but only approved for seafood in China, Wang said.

On ractopamine in pork, the Asian nation may change its rules once a risk evaluation has been completed under the standards of the Codex Alimentarius Commission, a joint food standard-setting body of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Health Organization, according to Wang.

To contact the reporter on this story: Dune Lawrence in Beijing on dlawrence@bloomberg.net