International Herald Tribune, Reuters
LONDON — Potentially toxic Chinese products have turned up in Europe, officials have confirmed, while China scrambles to contain food and consumer product safety scandals at home.
No one is known to have been harmed in Europe, but tens of thousands of tubes of toothpaste have been seized in Spain and Italy on suspicion of being tainted with diethylene glycol, the European Commission said.
"This is an unacceptable risk," said Helen Kearns, spokeswoman for the European Union's consumer affairs commissioner, Meglena Kuneva.
Tainted toothpaste has now been found on three continents, she said, pointing to the "global scale" of the problem. "We are addressing it seriously and in depth," she said.
The discovery of tainted toothpaste in Europe comes just ahead of a visit by Kuneva to China this month. She has already expressed concerns over the fact that more than half of all imported products notified for recall in the EU in 2006 originated in China.
The Spanish authorities said the latest goods were probably tainted by diethylene glycol, the same chemical that contaminated a batch of medicine in Panama last year, causing dozens of deaths, according to the commission.
European officials emphasized that the cases were not as serious as those in Panama because the chemical is dangerous only when ingested in significant doses — something that usually does not apply to toothpaste.
The commission described the threat as "moderate" and said that the only danger would be from children swallowing the product.
According to the Spanish authorities, a child weighing 12 kilograms, or 26.5 pounds, would have to swallow 80 milliliters, or 2.7 ounces, of toothpaste — the equivalent of a large tube — to suffer toxic effects.
Tainted Chinese products have also been found in Japan and Canada. Because of these discoveries, the European Commission sent an official warning on May 29 to authorities in 30 European countries that participate in an information-sharing rapid alert system on nonfood dangerous products, prompting the discoveries.
"It is clearly in China's interests to ensure that proper and effective controls are in place for goods supplied to the market," said a spokesman for Peter Mandelson, the European trade commissioner.
Last year the Chinese were given the right to see details of European product alerts on the condition that they acted to stem the export of goods if they were faulty or contaminated.
Separately, in China on Tuesday, officials from five regulatory agencies said that tests in four major cities found vegetables, meat and seafood to contain higher amount of pesticides and chemicals than in 2001, but vowed to ensure that 96 percent of all farm produce and seafood meet government standards.
"We found that 94.3 percent of the vegetables met government standards for pesticides, while 99.4 percent of the seafood met the government's permitted levels of chloramphenicol," said Zhang Yanqiu, a senior Agriculture Ministry official, adding that the levels were higher than those found in 2001. The cities under study were Shanghai, Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.
"Corruption in the food and drug authority has brought shame to the nation, Yan Jiangying, deputy policy director of the State Food and Drug Administration, said Tuesday. "The cases have exposed the loopholes in our work."
Yan spoke before the execution of his former boss and administration director, Zheng Xiaoyu, for bribery. On Monday, another top food safety official warned that China's inability to ensure safety in the food supply could lead to social unrest.
In Beijing, state media reported Tuesday that up to half of the water used in water coolers across the city could be "fake," or not as pure as its manufacturers claim.
The General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said last week that a fifth of the food and consumer products it checked in a survey this year were found to be substandard or contaminated with industrial byproducts.
China has sent back a shipment of sugar-free drink mix from the United States, after tests in Shanghai showed the presence of too much red dye, Reuters reported from Beijing.
The shipment was produced by Sturm Foods, manufacturer of powdered drinks and cereals based in Manawa, Wisconsin, the Xinhua press agency said.
China warned last month it would apply greater scrutiny to food shipments from the United States, even as international concern grows over the safety of Chinese food, drug and toy exports.
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