(Adds further government comment, paragraphs 15, 16) By Ben Blanchard BEIJING, May 21 (Reuters) - China moved to soothe mounting anxiety over the safety of its exports on Monday after a spate of health scares around the world, insisting it puts consumers first and is a responsible country. In the most recent scandal, U.S. consumers have been alarmed by a spate of pet deaths blamed on tainted wheat gluten and rice protein exported from China, as well as reports of toxins and disease in other Chinese exports. "The Chinese government pays a great deal of attention to consumer safety. China is a responsible country when it comes to protecting consumers' health and security," said Li Chuanqing, a vice-minister of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine. "We have worked hard to protect product quality and people's health," Li, whose ministry is in charge of ensuring the safety of the country's food exports, told the forum co-hosted by the International Consumer Product Health and Safety Organisation. Billions of dollars worth of counterfeit and substandard goods, from fake liquor and medicines to luxury handbags, are produced every year in China. In one of the most highly publicised scandals, China revealed in 2004 that at least 13 babies had died from malnutrition in the eastern province of Anhui after being fed fake baby milk. Nancy Nord, acting chairwoman of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, said that Washington would get tough. "As most of you may know, the balance of power has shifted somewhat in Washington. And the new Democratic-controlled Congress is very interested in how our agency is addressing the issue of imported consumer products," she told the forum. "...We continue to strive to ensure that foreign manufacturers and other trade participants, particularly those in China, fully understand our product safety standard system ... and that the mandatory and relevant voluntary standards are violated or ignored at their peril." SEISMIC SHIFT Li, while not directly addressing any of the recent cases, said that it was important China worked with the rest of the world to ensure quality problems were dealt with properly. "China is the world's largest exporter of consumer products," he said. "Our products are in every corner of the globe. "Experience shows that international cooperation and exchanges are an effective way of appropriately solving global product safety problems in a timely manner." As a measure perhaps of China's sensitivity to international criticism and its lack of transparency, security guards prevented foreign reporters from speaking to his colleague, vice-minister Wei Chuanzhong, who was at the same forum. China's rickety system of food and medicine inspections has also flared as a domestic worry. In April, the ruling Communist Party's Politburo -- its inner council -- met to discuss strengthening controls. The State Council, or Cabinet, said on Monday that ensuring food safety would be one of its priorities this year. "We must strengthen supervision over and punishments for the food and drug industries, grasping it at the roots," the central government said in a statement on its Web site (www.gov.cn). Nearly 200,000 people died each year in China from improper use of legitimate drugs, according to Jin Shiming, a committee member of the Guangdong Provincial Science and Technological Association. A Chinese-made medicine ingredient also killed at least 100 people in Panama, according to a report in the New York Times. Mark Dewar, a partner at law firm Simmons & Simmons and board member of the forum's co-hosts, said it was progress that Beijing was even hosting an international consumer product safety conference and China already had a strong, legal framework in place. "It's also extraordinarily keen to learn from other markets and very, very receptive," he told reporters. "They are hosting this conference -- this is a seismic step. They want to listen as to how the leading countries are doing this." (Additional reporting by Tan Ee Lyn in Hong Kong and Lindsay Beck and Chris Buckley in Beijing)
