"A permanent FDA presence in China will help us address the challenges presented by globalisation," FDA commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach told journalists at the opening of the Beijing branch.

"We look forward to working with the Chinese government and manufacturers to ensure that FDA standards for safety and manufacturing quality are met before products ship to the United States."

China is in the midst of a huge tainted milk scandal that saw four babies die and 53,000 fall ill this year after they ingested dairy products laced with the industrial chemical melamine.

The melamine was mixed into the milk to give dairy products the appearance of higher protein levels in the latest in a series of safety scandals involving Chinese food and other products in recent years.

Highlighting the problems in China, the head of the nation's food and drug watchdog was executed last year for corruption.

US authorities last week issued a nationwide "import alert" for Chinese foods for possible melamine contamination.

However FDA food commissioner David Acheson said the United States would continue to import food from China and that trend was "going to be increasing".

Of the 320 billion dollars of products the United States imported from China in 2007, about 4.4 billion dollars worth were food imports, half of which were seafood such as shrimp and catfish, according to US data.

As part of the increasing co-operation between the two sides, China will send food and quality control officials to the United States, Chinese officials said on Tuesday.

Acheson said the opening of the new FDA offices in the three Chinese cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou was part of a global trend, and not because the United States was targeting China over its safety issues.

"This is not just about the US and China, this is about how the FDA is responding to the global food supply and the need to ensure safety for American consumers," Acheson said.

"We are currently importing about 15 percent of the food we eat in the United States and it is increasing every year."

The United States imports food from more than 200,000 foreign manufacturers in over 150 countries.

The FDA plans to establish similar offices in the coming months in India, Latin America and in Europe, US officials said.

Mike Leavitt, head of the US Department of Health and Human Services, told journalists the United States was setting up the offices around the world to help ensure products, including drugs, met US safety standards.

"A very high percentage of the generic drugs that are ingested by Americans are produced in China or India," Leavitt said.

"By having a presence in other parts of the world, we can work more closely with manufacturers and other governments... and better ensure that quality and safety are built into food and consumer products at the point of manufacture."

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