The United States and China will sign two agreements to ensure Chinese-made food, feed and medial devices exported to the United States to meet the U.S. standards, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said Monday.

 

"Early next week, we hope to sign binding memorandums of understanding in the areas of food and feed and devices and drugs," Leavitt said in a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

 

He said Chinese officials understand that the "Made in China" was very much affected by the recent recalls, admitting the Chinese government has worked aggressively to improve the safety of products.

 

Leavitt, also the chairman of the President's cabinet-level Import Safety Working Group which was established in July, will visit Beijing in mid-December and hold talks with his Chinese counterparts on the safety issue, according to U.S. officials.

 

The United States and China have signed a series of agreements aimed at strengthening cooperation to improve safety of consumer products following the recalls.

 

Many Chinese officials noted that some recalled Chinese products could be attributed to real quality and safety problem, but majority of the recalls were due to a large gap in standards between the two countries and design failures.

 

A report released by two Canadian business professors recently also concluded that most of the recalls of toys made in China are because of design errors, not manufacturing problems or the lead paint issue.

 

The report, which analyzed Chinese-made toy recalls by going through recalls issued by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission from 1988 to August, 2007, found of the 550 toy recalls,76.4 percent were due to problems that could be attributed to design flaws.

 

Of the 20 million toys recalled by Mattel in the past month, 80 percent were because they contained small magnets, which is a design flaw, said the report.

 

(Xinhua News Agency December 4, 2007)