China has vowed to hand out the “harshest penalties” to food safety violators and to further reform the food and drug safety administration, Xinhua news agency said on Saturday.

Vice-Premier Wang Yang made the comment during an inspection tour of Beijing’s food safety monitoring centre on Friday, the news agency said.

“The strictest supervision should be carried out to create a fair market environment, the harshest penalties should be used to deter violations, and the most serious accountability system should be established to punish those who fail to perform their duties,” Xinhua quoted Wang as saying.