A senior food safety official from Beijing yesterday reasserted the high safety standards of the mainland's exported food items after some foreign governments recently banned three brands of toothpaste from the mainland.

Li Yuanping, director-general of Import and Export Food Safety Bureau of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, said this at a food, health and quarantine conference held in Hong Kong yesterday.

Li was referring to the recent ban imposed by the US, New Zealand, Singapore and a few other countries and regions on the products of three brands of toothpaste exported from the mainland, which was found to contain diethylene glycol, a chemical used in antifreeze.

The SAR government, which has adopted European Union standards in this respect, has also joined the ban.

Li pointed out that the mainland's food products exported to the US, EU, Japan and Hong Kong, its major exporting markets, have achieved a 99 percent passing rate in food safety over the past three years.

According to mainland experts, Li said, toothpaste containing not more than 15.6 percent of the chemical was considered safe under normal circumstances.

He blamed some foreign media for citing individual cases to generalize and create a panic over the safety levels of the mainland's food exports.

Stringent procedures have been followed to ensure that the foodstuff exported to Hong Kong are safe, he stressed.

After meeting the SAR government's Acting Deputy Commissioner of Customs and Excise Chow Kwong in the afternoon, Li said his department would enforce the law according to advice from the Department of Health. There has been no other mainland brands of toothpaste found to have problem, he added.

At the conference, officials and experts from Guangdong, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, and Macao discussed on the topics of health, animal and plant quarantine and food safety control to further promote the co-operation among the five places in these areas.

Speaking at the opening of the meeting, Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food York Chow noted that incidents such as SARS and avian flu attacks and malachite green-induced food scare had stressed the need of health, inspection and quarantine as well as food safety.

Chow said there was heavy volume of passengers and freight flow between the five neighboring places.

With further development in regional economic co-operation, the mainland, Macao and Hong Kong had to further strengthen cooperation on this front, he said, adding that sound foundation had been laid in this respect.

The meeting discussed inspection and quarantine on health, fruits and vegetables, aquatic products, plants, animal and livestock as well as the management of food safety of poultry eggs, and laboratory standard.

The two-day conference will end today.