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BEIJING / GENEVA: Major food-producing countries are increasingly frustrated with China’s scrutiny of imported products and have asked it to stop aggressive testing for the coronavirus, which some say amounts to a trade restriction.
China said it has found the virus in the packaging of products from 20 countries, including German pork, Brazilian beef and Indian fish, but foreign officials said the lack of evidence presented by authorities means that it is damaging the trade and reputation of imported food for no reason. .
At a meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on November 5-6, Canada called China’s testing of imported food and the rejection of products that had positive nucleic acid tests “unjustified trade restrictions” and urged him to be stopped, a Geneva-based body said. Trade official reported on the meeting that he declined to be named.
Supported by Australia, Brazil, Mexico, the United Kingdom and the United States, Canada argued that China had not provided a scientific justification for the measures, the official said.
Canada’s Geneva-based mission to the WTO did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
China has only stepped up its selection of imported food since then.
READ: China’s Tianjin To Test Food Cold Storage Sites After Confirmed COVID-19 Case
This week, the Global Times, a tabloid backed by the ruling Communist Party, suggested that the presence of the new coronavirus in imported food raised the possibility that the virus, which is believed to have originated in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late last year, it may have come from abroad.
China began testing imports of refrigerated and frozen food for the virus in June, following a series of infections among workers at a wholesale food market in the capital.
The World Health Organization said neither food nor packaging are known routes of transmission for the virus.
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But China, which has practically eliminated local transmission of the disease, said there is a risk of the virus re-entering the country in food products.
“IT IS TRUE?”
The pullback came after months of growing frustration with the way customs and health authorities have increasingly been scrutinizing imports, which trading partners have complained about failing to adhere to global standards.
“Every time a health authority runs a test and finds something, it must share the results,” said a Beijing-based diplomat who declined to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
“We haven’t received a single lab test,” he said. “Everyone asks ‘Is it true? Did they really find something?’ Everyone is surprised that no proof is presented. “
On Monday, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern also questioned China’s findings, after the city of Jinan said it had detected coronavirus in New Zealand frozen meat.
READ: China finds coronavirus in frozen meat, Latin American and New Zealand packaging
Ardern said he was confident that meat products would not be exported from his country with the coronavirus, but that China did not provide any clarification.
In August, Brazilian officials traveled to the city of Shenzhen after finding traces of the coronavirus in chicken wings from their country.
Authorities were unable to provide information on whether they had found the virus active or not, the Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture said.
In its response at the WTO, China said its actions were “provisionally based on science” and designed to “protect people’s lives as much as possible,” according to a Chinese trade official.
READ: New Zealand says it has not been notified by Chinese authorities about COVID-19 in its meat
China has pointed to its isolation of live coronavirus from samples of imported frozen cod, a world first, as proof, albeit with unpublished evidence, that coronavirus can be transmitted from food to people.
Speaking at a food safety conference this month, Gudrun Gallhoff, advisory minister for health and food safety in the European Union delegation to China, said exporters needed more information on China’s test methods and results.
“If you have business partners, you should treat them fairly and give them the opportunity to be complicit,” he said.
