China has released food and drug safety goals for the next five years, promising stronger surveillance and export controls that officials say will help improve China's international image and relations.

'Food safety is not only a problem related to law enforcement, but also related to the people's health and safety, the country's image, and also bilateral and multilateral political relationships.'—Li Changjiang, General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine.

Li Changjiang, head of China's main food safety agency, said stricter measures were a "political responsibility" that all levels of government must take. His remarks came as the State Council, China's cabinet, outlined its strategy to make food safety the "starting point and destination of all works."

"Food safety is not only a problem related to law enforcement, but also related to the people's health and safety, the country's image, and also bilateral and multilateral political relationships," said Li, director of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine.

He spoke last week during an inspection tour of Shenzhen city in booming Guangdong province near Hong Kong, and his comments were posted on the agency's website late Tuesday.

Better inspections, more random testing

Both Li and Wei Chuanzhong, the administration's deputy director, outlined measures that need to be imposed to guarantee the safety of exported food — including better inspections at food sources and ports, more random sample testing and greater co-operation with the United States.

They also called for better law enforcement, and said those ignoring safety rules will be punished.

In the past few months, U.S. inspectors have banned or turned away a growing number of Chinese exports including wheat gluten tainted with the chemical melamine, which has been blamed for dog and cat deaths in North America.

What is melamine?
Melamine is an industrial chemical used to make plastics and fertilizers. The chemical was found in more than 100 brands of pet food, which were recalled from the marketplace in Canada and the United States in mid-March.

Monkfish containing life-threatening levels of pufferfish toxins were discovered, as were drug-laced frozen eel, and juice made with unsafe colour additives.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has also stopped all imports of Chinese toothpaste to test for a deadly chemical reportedly found in tubes sold in Australia, the Dominican Republic and Panama. Singapore has banned three types of China-made toothpaste after tests showed they contained a poisonous chemical.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is holding and testing all shipments of vegetable proteins being brought into the country. CFIA officials in late May said they had intercepted one shipment of corn gluten imported from China that tested positive for melamine and cyanuric acid.

New recall system to be introduced

Last week, the quality control administration announced plans to implement its first recall system for unsafe products by the end of the year.

The country's former top drug regulator also was sentenced to death in an unusually harsh punishment for taking bribes to approve substandard medicines, including an antibiotic blamed for at least 10 deaths.

The actions were among the most dramatic steps Beijing has publicly taken to address domestic and international concern over unsafe Chinese goods.