Mr. Barboza - this your way of summarizing your out-of-this-world Pulitzer story and responding to the charges you threw on the fish farmers of an entire country based on alleged research in a small town? Well, thanks. So much for media professionalism.

I hope Ding (if he really said those words) was responding to your ORIGINAL article, not its heavily-edited two-pager Chinese translation that your comrades put up on the NYT website, along with the MP3 file of its readup that sounded like an obituary more than anything else. Such a waste of the voice, don't you think?

And by the way, media always "are" or "were", not "is" and "was" - unless Yale taught you differently. Of course, maybe you were too held up in putting us in context - "the state-controlled" blah blah blah - but still, what's not right is not right. Next time, remember to check your work before sending it off. Okay? It's for your own good, David.

                                                           China Says Its Seafood Is Now Safer and Better

By David Barboza
Published: January 18, 2008

BEIJING: (NY TIMES) The Chinese Ministry of Agriculture said a recent nationwide crackdown on the use of illegal veterinary drugs had already significantly improved the quality and safety of the country's seafood production.

Regulators said that over the past year more than 30,000 inspectors had fanned out across the country, working to close shoddy seafood operations and enforce regulations against the use of banned antibiotics, like chloramphenicol and malachite green, which is believed to cause cancer.

But officials from the ministry's fisheries bureau also said that pollution and water quality problems had become the biggest challenges facing China's fish farming or aquaculture industry, something they have rarely acknowledged in public.

"Water quality is the top issue for Chinese aquaculture," Ding Xiaoming, the director of aquaculture in the ministry's fisheries bureau, said Tuesday. "Without good water quality, Chinese aquaculture cannot develop."

During a 30-minute interview at the Ministry of Agriculture in Beijing, Ding blamed China's rapid urbanization and industrialization for spoiling the environment and polluting waterways that are used by factory-style fish farms, a situation that experts say has forced some farmers to turn to illegal drugs.

He said the government was rolling out an array of new programs and regulations to educate farmers and combat the quality problems.

The government's sweeping effort is aimed at restoring confidence in Chinese seafood exports after a year of food and product safety scandals involving everything from tainted seafood to toxic toys and toothpaste.

The stakes are huge because China is now the leading producer and exporter of seafood in the world and an important supplier to the United States and Japan.

And with the seas increasingly depleted by overfishing, much of the world is turning to China's massive land-based fish farms to meet growing consumer demand for everything from shrimp and catfish to tilapia and eel.

But after years of spectacular growth, this country's booming seafood industry is being threatened by water shortages, contaminated water supplies and illegal veterinary drug use.

In recent years, Japan and the European Union have imposed temporary bans on seafood imports from China because of excessive residues of illegal drugs. And last June, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration moved to block the import of several types of Chinese seafood products because of similar food safety concerns.

Experts here say Chinese fish farmers often turn to illegal veterinary drugs because they can help keep fish alive in overcrowded fish ponds that are sometimes contaminated by sewage, agricultural runoff and industrial chemicals.

Some of the banned veterinary drugs are believed to be highly effective in helping stressed fish cope with disease.

But fish that are fed such drugs could be poisonous for consumers, regulators say.

Last year, China had by far the largest number of seafood imports rejected by the United States, according to records kept by the Food and Drug Administration. The vast majority of those rejected shipments were linked to illegal drug residues.

The Chinese government has responded aggressively in recent months by blacklisting seafood processors or revoking the licenses of companies that export seafood tainted with illegal drugs or other banned substances.

But China has also lashed out at the United States and other countries that have blocked its food exports, insisting that the vast majority are safe and meet quality standards and that media coverage has often been sensational and distorted.

Beijing has pointedly criticized an article in The New York Times in December with the headline, "In China, Farming Fish in Toxic Waters." (The article appeared under a different headline in the International Herald Tribune.) It detailed some of the challenges facing China's seafood industry, noting that many producers had often used illegal veterinary drugs to cope with fishing or farming in polluted waters.

"It is a question of common sense. Do you believe that fish can live in toxic water?" Agriculture Vice Minister Gao Hongbin said at a news conference last week, responding to a question from a Reuters reporter. "Personally, I believe that this report is sensational and misleading."

The state-controlled news media here was also critical of the article, quoting farmers and aquaculture officials as saying the report was "totally groundless."

However, in the interview Tuesday, Ding, a high-ranking official at the fisheries bureau, said the article was accurate. But he called the headline sensational and erroneous.

"I think your article was correct," he said Tuesday, but "it's not scientific to say the water is toxic."

The interview was cut short, however, after Ding began acknowledging some of the industry's problems and seemed to contradict other agricultural officials, who criticized the article.

Another fisheries bureau official attending the interview cut several questions off, suddenly declaring, "Thank you for coming."

But before the session ended, Ding explained that regulators were having difficulty stopping polluters from damaging waterways used by fish farmers because much of the pollution occurs gradually.

While regulators acknowledge that small-scale farmers are difficult to patrol and crooked seafood processors give the industry a bad name, others insist that the food safety worries are vastly exaggerated and partly the result of protectionist efforts by interest groups in the United States and Japan that are trying to stop China from gaining market share.

The seemingly contradictory statements may reflect divisions within the Chinese government over how to deal with a problem that could seriously harm one of the country's most valuable agricultural exports.

Despite food safety worries, China said its seafood exports grew to a record $8.7 billion in the year through November, although the rate of growth slowed to about 4 percent from 19 percent a year earlier.