Dou Bingyi, vice-chairman with the China Seasoning Association, said all eligible soy sauce products in China do not contain high levels of cancer-causing chemicals.

According to Dou, the state standard is higher than the UK's criteria on the quality of soy sauce, including the contents of 3-MCPD.

"The government strictly controls soy sauce quality, and the companies that have the export rights usually make better products,'' he said.

Chinese people have eaten soy sauce for generations with no evidence that they suffer from more cancers as a result, he said.

The UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) warned consumers to avoid 22 kinds of soy sauce products, imported from Thailand, the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan after finding high levels of 3-MCPD.

The State General Administration for Quality Supervision and Inspection and Quarantine refused to make official comments on the charge.

"The reports of many British tabloids have caused panic among ordinary British of Chinese soy sauce and Chinese food and were sensational,'' said an official, who refused to be named.

He questioned the accuracy of the FSA tests as samples were taken from products manufactured two years ago.

However, he emphasized that the remarks were his personal viewpoints.

According to Wang Shenzu, from Hong Kong soy sauce maker Lee Kum Kee's Guangzhou company, whose five products are on the FSA list, the samples FSA test were made before October 1999, when the company took steps to modify its production process.

Wang said the government had never found detectable levels of 3-MCPD in its product.

Lin Jian, a quality-control officer at Jammy Chai (Guangzhou) Food Co Ltd, also named by the FSA, said his company had not exported soy sauce to Britain in recent years.

"You can say for sure that those brands are not ours,'' he said.

Some said that many samples of FSA were counterfeits of Chinese products.

(Chinadaily.com.cn 06/26/2001)