Chinese and U.S. officials hold talks on seafood exports, food safety cooperation

China said it would work with the United States to improve product safety amid a massive U.S. recall Thursday of lead-contaminated preschool toys made by a Chinese vendor, including the popular Big Bird, Elmo, Dora and Diego characters.

The remarks came just ahead of toy-maker Fisher-Price's announcement that it was recalling almost 1 million toys, the latest in a string of Chinese product safety scandals.

China "attaches great importance to product quality and food safety and is highly responsible," said Wei Chuanzhong, an official with the General Administration for Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, one of China's product safety watchdogs.

"We want to cooperate with other countries including the U.S. to strengthen cooperation and communication," Wei was quoted as saying on the administration's Web site.

However, Wei added that while China would "not avoid our problems, we also do not agree to playing up the situation regardless of the facts.

"We shouldn't use problems found in one product to block all products," Wei said, in a nod to Chinese concerns that scattered safety violations are threatening the reputation of all Chinese exports. China has acknowledged safety problems, but says other countries are grappling with similar issues.

Wei's spoke during a Wednesday meeting with team of American health experts, led by U.S. Health and Human Services official Rich McKeown.

The delegation, during a five-day visit to China, seeks to develop systems for ensuring the safety of food, animal feed, drugs and medical devices exported from China.

Problematic exports came under intense scrutiny earlier this year after a Chinese ingredient in pet food was linked to the deaths of cats and dogs in North America. Since then an expanding list of Chinese goods have been banned or recalled around the world because they contain potentially dangerous levels of chemicals and toxins.

Fisher-Price found excessive lead in the products during an internal probe and went to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, David Allmark, company general manager, told The Associated Press Wednesday.

Under current regulations, children's products found to have more than .06 percent lead are subject to a recall.

An official surnamed Xia who answered the telephone at China's General Administration for Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, said they had heard of the recall but could not comment because the case was under investigation.

Allmark said two-thirds of the toys were quarantined before they made it to store shelves. In negotiating details of the recall, Fisher-Price and the government agreed to withhold details from the public until Thursday to give stores time to get suspect toys off shelves and Fisher-Price time to get its recall hot line up and running.

Fisher-Price said it was troubled by the incident because it has a long-standing relationship with the Chinese vendor, which applies decorative paint to toys.

Toymaker RC2 Corp. in June recalled 1.5 million wooden railroad toys and set parts from its Thomas & Friends Wooden Railway product line. The company said that the surface paint on certain toys and parts made in China between January 2005 and April 2006 contain lead.

Also Thursday, state media said Chinese officials seized two tons of dried banana chips imported from the Philippines because they contained levels of the preservative sulfur dioxide that were 25 times the maximum allowed by Chinese regulations.

China's latest actions and announcements _ both conciliatory and defensive _ illustrate how the country has been dealing with a growing international backlash against its exports because of health and safety concerns.

The government executed the former director of its food and drug agency last month for approving fake medicine in exchange for cash.

The Xinhua News Agency reported that two people have now been arrested in the southwestern province of Sichuan for selling fake rabies vaccines. The vaccines, made in Heilongjiang province thousands of kilometers (miles) away, have been administered to 29 people in Sichuan and another 198 in Heilongjiang, Xinhua said.