China and the United States will increase cooperation and the exchange of information on food and drug safety, the US health chief Mike Leavitt said in a statement issued on Friday.
The statement, the result of a five-day meeting in Beijing, said the US will offer Chinese quality inspectors technical assistance to address food and drugs safety problems.

The US will also help a Chinese firm, which is currently under an import alert, take the appropriate steps to have the alert removed.

"If successful, this approach could be a model for other firms affected by import alerts," Leavitt, the US Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), said in the statement.

He said after the US delegation met officials from relevant Chinese government departments, including the General Administration of Quality Supervision Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) and the Ministry of Health, the sides agreed initial frameworks for two Memoranda of Agreement.

One is on the safety of food and feed, and the other on the safety of drugs and medical devices.

Leavitt said the MOAs aim to increase cooperation and information sharing.

"I am optimistic about our initial progress with our Chinese colleagues, and I am hopeful the next series of bilateral meetings later this month, in Beijing, will keep us moving forward," said the US official.

The AQSIQ also said in a statement released on Thursday that China would like to "work together with the US to strengthen cooperation and communication" in matters of mutual concern.

It said the two sides had discussed specific issues of concern, including the US import alert on five seafood products from China.

The statement confirmed that a vice-minister-level bilateral meeting on food and feed safety had been scheduled for the middle of this month.

However, the AQSIQ's deputy director Wei Chuanzhong said in the statement that "China will not evade our problems, but we also do not agree to playing up the situation regardless of the facts".

"Food safety is not only China's concern but also a problem for all countries in the world," he said.

AQSIQ figures show that more than 99 percent of Chinese food exports to the US in the past three years had met quality standards, about the same, or even higher, than the equivalent figure for US food exports to China.

On Friday, the AQSIQ also announced that harmful bacteria and illegal dyes had been found in aquatic products and tinned fruit from Indonesia.

The announcement came after an AQSIQ notification on Tuesday that Chinese quarantine officials had seized two tons of dried banana chips from the Philippines because they contained too much of the preservative sulfur dioxide.

AQSIQ figures show that in the first half of the year, drug residues, excessive amounts of food additives and harmful bacteria had been detected in 121 food shipments from Indonesia.

Substandard food products had also been found recently in 13 shipments from the Philippines.

The unsafe products were either returned or destroyed, the AQSIQ said. It also ordered local authorities to strengthen quarantine measures on food from the two countries.