NEW Zealand food safety regulators have given imports of Chinese food a green light after a broad range of tests, the country's Food Safety Authority said yesterday.

The agency said tests of imported vegetable protein - wheat gluten and soy and corn meal - found no harmful chemical residue.

A survey of Chinese aquaculture products also discovered "no residue levels of concern," the safety authority said.

The official agency, responsible for "protecting and promoting New Zealand public health and safety," also tested a range of New Zealand-grown and imported fruit and vegetables.

Glen Neal, the agency's assistant director, said that despite targeting areas "where we believed we were most likely to find residues higher than the regulatory limit, we found just one breach in imported food, and a small number in a wide range of tests of New Zealand foods."

"None of these represented any risks to health," Neal said.

The tests on vegetable proteins followed concerns in the United States that melamine and cyanuric acid used by Chinese pet food manufacturers to boost the perceived protein level in the foods may have caused the deaths of pets in America.

Neal said his agency has tested 15 samples of pet foods since mid-May, including products imported into New Zealand from China, and did not found any traces of melamine or cyanuric acid.

Also following public concerns, the food safety agency looked at imports of Chinese farmed fish.

It tested 31 canned and frozen products including shrimp, eel, prawns, dace, carp, anchovy, roe, fish balls and other processed product.

"We found six residues of a class of antimicrobials, known as triphenylmethane dyes, and nine residues of nitrofuran metabolites. Nitrofurans are a class of antibiotics," Neal said.

"All of these results - even the highest at 0.058 milligrams per kilogram - were well below any level that would pose a health risk."

He said many of the results were very near to the threshold of detectability.

"The results we found are similar to those other regulators around the world are finding and show that the products being sold in New Zealand meet requirements and are safe to consume," Neal said.

He said his agency was planning another survey of seafood later in the year covering a broader range of residues, such as those that have shown up at the borders of the United States and Australia.