China's Health Minister Cheng Zhu and his U.S. counterpart Mike Leavitt said at a press conference that China and the United States would set up food safety surveillance offices in each other's country to enhance communication and cooperation on food safety between the two countries.
Chen said that establishing food safety surveillance offices in each other's country represents a new and deepened cooperation pattern on food safety between the two countries. He said that China is preparing to set up food offices in the USA and the three offices that the U.S. side has established in China will begin operations soon.
He added that dispatching surveillance officials to each other's country will play an active role in promoting the interaction between the surveillance departments and enterprises of each country and this will also create a good chance for China and the USA to learn about each other's food and drug import standards.
According to Mike Leavitt, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will set up three offices in the Chinese cities of Beijing, Guangzhou, and Shanghai and the main tasks of these offices will be to help China improve its capacity in food safety surveillance and to check China's food and drugs to be exported to the USA. In addition to the three offices in China, the FDA also plans to set up two more offices in India next month and two others in Latin America the month after.
