Dive Summary:

• The FDA and the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection, and Quarantine of China have renewed a standing agreement to collaborate of food safety issues and regulations.
• The collaboration includes joint inspections of food processing plants, better insight on imported and exported foods between the two countries and general compliance and efficiency standards.
• After the previous agreement was made, the FDA opened offices in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou to better facilitate the process of inspecting Chinese products for American consumers.

From the article:

FDA noted that the agency has made progress in several areas since the agreement was first signed five years ago:

- FDA has increased the number of facility inspections in China from no inspections in 2007 to 85 in 2011.

- In conjunction with AQSIQ, FDA experts have conducted workshops for members of the Chinese industry on FDA requirements for several categories of high-risk foods, including low-acid canned foods and farm-raised fish. As a result, Chinese regulators have implemented more stringent oversight of canneries shipping products to the United States.

- FDA and AQSIQ have also worked jointly to identify strategic ways to address problems associated with use of unsafe drugs in growing ponds at Chinese fish farms.