BEIJING – China’s product safety watchdog said Friday that it had revoked the business licenses of several firms at the heart of food and drug safety scares and banned them from exporting their products.

The actions by the General Administration for Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine are the latest in a series of moves by Beijing to try to clean up its drug and food industries, which are under international scrutiny after substandard Chinese goods have been rejected around the world as dangerous.

Fears abroad over Chinese-made drugs were sparked last year by the deaths of dozens of people in Panama who took medicine contaminated with the diethylene glycol.

This year in the United States and Canada, pet food containing the wheat gluten tainted with the chemical melamine has been blamed for the deaths of dogs and cats. Since then, U.S. authorities have turned away or recalled toxic fish, juice containing unsafe color additives and popular toy trains decorated with lead paint.

Friday’s announcement was the first action in the medicine case. China already has announced the detention of an unspecified number of managers in connection with pet food case.

China also previously announced tougher food and drug safety guidelines, and increased inspections of plants.

The administration said Friday it had pulled the business license of Taixing Glycerin Factory. The company in eastern China has been accused of exporting diethylene glycol _ a thickening agent used in antifreeze _ and fraudulently passing it off as 99.5 percent pure glycerin that eventually ended up in Panamanian medicines that killed at least 51 people.

“Its workshop and facilities have been closed down by the Jiangsu province and its business license revoked,” the administration said in a statement.

It said that the Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Co. Ltd, also in Jiangsu province, had its license revoked, its offices and workshops closed, and its right to import and export taken away.

“It unlawfully added melamine in some of its products which could not meet the protein content requirement set in the contracts,” the administration said.

Melamine-tainted wheat gluten from the company ended up in pet food in North American blamed for the deaths of dozens of dogs and cats.

The business license for Binzhou Futian Biology Technology Co. Ltd. was also revoked and its offices and workshops closed, the administration said.

“It added melamine in some of its products which could not meet the protein content requirement … constituting severe adulteration,” the statement said.

Binzhou Futian had also tried to avoid inspections, it said.

Melamine, used in plastics, fertilizers and flame retardants, has no nutritional value but is high in nitrogen, making products to which it is added it appear to be higher in protein.

China has also accused the companies of illegally mislabeling their exports to avoid inspections.

Legal action was being taken against managers of the companies, but the administration did not give any details.

In other developments this week, Chinese police have arrested a journalist accused of faking an investigative report on buns stuffed with shredded cardboard that made headlines around the world and Beijing Television apologized for airing the footage.

Beijing Television apologized during an evening news broadcast, saying the bun report was a hoax and the reporter had been taken into custody, but did not say when. A copy of the Wednesday broadcast was obtained by The Associated Press on Thursday.

“He used deceptive means to get the footage on the air,” said news anchor Wang Ye, without giving specifics. “The Beijing Public Security Bureau has taken the criminal suspect, Zi, into custody and he will be severely dealt with according to law.”

The official Xinhua News Agency said the suspect’s full name is Zi Beijia.

Zi’s footage appeared to show a makeshift kitchen where vendors made fluffy buns stuffed with chopped-up cardboard that had been softened in caustic soda and mixed with pork fat and flavoring.

The story, allegedly shot with a hidden camera, was first broadcast on Beijing Television’s Life Channel on July 8 and then again three days later on China Central Television.

The footage gained worldwide media attention, reinforcing the image of China’s food safety woes. It made headlines in China as well and created a buzz on the Internet, where people flooded chat rooms with comments expressing shock and disgust. On YouTube, the video had been viewed more than 6,000 times by Thursday.

Police said Zi had told editors he wanted to investigate the quality of pork buns, and spent two weeks visiting stands but could not find anything to report, Xinhua said. He filmed the fake report after coming under pressure to produce a story, the agency said.

Beijing Television said Zi brought meat, flour, cardboard and other ingredients to a downtown Beijing neighborhood in mid-June, and had four migrant workers make the buns for him while he filmed the process.

The station said it was “profoundly sorry” for the fake report and its “vile impact on society,” and vowed to prevent inaccurate news coverage in the future. However, the apology did not answer questions about how the report ended up being aired or what sort of editorial checks were done on the story.

Meanwhile, Chinese candy maker Guan Sheng Yuan Co. denied Philippine allegations on Thursday that one of its products was tainted with formaldehyde, an embalming fluid and preservative.

The Shanghai-based confectioner said it sent samples of its “White Rabbit” milk candy to a lab for testing after it was banned by the Philippine Bureau of Food and Drugs.

“Guan Sheng Yuan Co. makes this pledge to society: Absolutely at no point during the manufacturing of White Rabbit milk candy are preservatives added,” the company said in a statement posted on its Web site.

Rivals have made numerous counterfeit versions of the popular candy, the company said, calling the Philippine food and drug bureau “irresponsible” for not checking the candy’s authenticity, and threatening to sue.

Joshua Ramos, deputy director of the Philippine food and drugs bureau, insisted Thursday that samples of the candy the agency found tainted with formaldehyde were genuine and obtained from legitimate distributors.

The speed of Guan Sheng Yuan’s response underscored concerns the deteriorating reputation of Chinese food exports could spread to some of the country’s best-known brands.

In a statement Thursday, the Chinese Embassy in Washington moved to calm fears about the safety of China’s exports, saying it takes the issue seriously and is waging an “ongoing campaign” to address the problem. It also cautioned against using individual lapses in safety to impugn the country’s entire food industry.

Associated Press Writer Lily Hindy in New York contributed to this report.

A service of the Associated Press(AP)