Beijing will introduce tough new laws as well as an "accountability system" to crackdown on rampant food safety violations, the official Xinhua news agency reported, a significant move aimed at the elimination of food scandals that have claimed several lives in recent years.

Under the proposed new law, firms caught using banned substances in foods, producing food from inedible ingredients, or illegally making, selling or using banned food additives will be banned from the industry for life while employees and executives found guilty of food safety violations will not be allowed to work in the industry for five years after their firms' licenses are revoked, the official Xinhua news agency reported yesterday.

Under the new proposed framework, the use of "gutter oil", or cooking oil that has been discarded - a chronic problem in China - will also be banned.

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The regulation, effective from April 1, 2013, follows a similar declaration by the municipality of Shanghai earlier this week and is seen as an attempt to assuage the fears of consumers and their growing distrust towards local food manufacturers.

On Monday, Shanghai's Food and Drug Administration, responding to a state-media exposé, said the levels of antibiotics and steroids in KFC chickens were within official safety limits but called for further investigation after the discovery of what it called a suspicious level of an antiviral drug in one of its eight test samples.

Reports of gelatin capsules, carcinogens in milk, and fake eggs are not uncommon in China. In 2008, dairy producers were discovered to have added the industrial chemical melamine to baby milk formula, killing six infants and sickening 300,000 others.

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Despite the intense public uproar and scrutiny, China's food safety problems have proven difficult to eradicate even after repeated attempts to enforce existing laws. Some food safety experts have questioned the effectiveness of the latest government campaign.

Wu Yongning, chief scientist of the China National Centre for Food Safety Risk Assessment, said:

Safe food depends on production, not on supervision. All that is needed is credibility - credible people will produce safe food.

This article was first published by the EconomyWatch.com on December 28, 2012.