Imports From China and Food Safety Issues. ERS Report Summary

摘要

China has emerged in recent years as an important source of food imports in the United States. Food imports from China more than tripled in value between 2001 and 2008. Several highly publicized incidents of food contamination and adulteration in both the Chinese food supply and in U.S. food imports from China have focused public concern on the safety of food from China. Motivated in part by these concerns, a U.S. Government Interagency Working Group on Import Safety issued an Action Plan for Import Safety and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a Food Protection Plan in 2007. FDA opened its first overseas office in China in 2008. This report discusses potential food safety risks associated with food imports from China based on available data. The report describes the types of foods imported from China based on U.S. Customs statistics and assesses their importance in the U.S. food supply, analyzes FDA refusals of food shipments from China, and describes food safety regulation and enforcement in China. Although the FDA data do not necessarily reflect the distribution of risk in foods, the import refusal data highlight food safety concerns for which FDA has focused its import alerts, examinations (e.g., sampling), and other monitoring efforts.