By Ben Blanchard

BEIJING, June 1 (Reuters) - China hit back on Friday at accusations its products are unsafe, pointing out that a quarter of imported children's milk bottles and teats failed a recent random quality test in a southeastern province.

It was the latest in a spate of reports in China's carefully controlled media lambasting foreign goods for supposed safety and health problems.

"Do you think foreign brands mean high quality?" the official Xinhua news agency asked, before detailing the findings of the survey in coastal Fujian province.

Xinhua warned the results of the baby products probe "should attract the highest attention from children and their parents".

"These products are not up to standard for safety and hygiene reasons, and may harm children's safety and health," it said.

The products came from Japan, Germany, Britain, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Taiwan and Hong Kong, Xinhua said, adding "most of them were brand-name goods".

The report comes as international attention is focused on the "made-in-China" label following a series of scandals overseas, including pet deaths in the United States from tainted food, to toxic chemicals in Central American toothpaste and medicine.

Now Beijing is turning the attention to pointing out exports to China might also not always be safe.

This week alone, China has turned away 30 tonnes of frozen seafood from Australia that it said was tainted with heavy metals, and gave five container loads of Evian mineral water a failing grade for having too many micro-organisms.

SUBSTANDARD

In fact, a senior official said, China's food safety export controls are even stronger than U.S. import controls.

He said that of the 137 cases of substandard imported Chinese food found in April in the United States, 77 had been illegally exported and so avoided China's stringent export quality checks.

"This is because of differences in the Chinese and U.S. food safety management system," said Li Yuanping, director-general of the import and export food safety bureau of the General Administration of Quality Supervision.

"In the United States, it does not matter whether the producing company has a hygiene registration for export, or if the goods have been inspected by the exporting country's officials, the United States lets them all in," he added.

In April, China also discovered salmonella in some U.S. meat imports, Li said.

He blamed the media for stoking fears about the safety of the nation's food and drugs, but acknowledged that it was not realistic to expect a 100 percent quality guarantee.

Yet China's protestations might not put the world at ease.

"The whole issue of China now being part of the global network food chain, people are going to have to really pay attention to what they're being supplied from China with," said Matthew Crabbe, managing director of consumer research group Access Asia.

"There's a real issue that people buying stuff from China really need to know where it's coming from, in minute detail, really," Crabbe said. "It's gone past the stage where it's just a China problem. It's not any more." (Additional reporting by Lindsay Beck)

AlertNet news is provided by