China's State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) plans to overhaul its food and drug safety market during the next five years.

People's Daily reports that the plan will spread China's food safety supervision network to more than 90% of its counties by the end of 2010.

The SFDA says it will establish evaluation systems for medicines and medical apparati, and carry out the evaluation of Chinese traditional medicines.

In the first 11 months of 2005, local media report that China handled 258,700 medicine-related cases which involved RMB430 million in value.

At the same time, China banned 114,00 unlicensed manufacturers, destroyed 461 illegal manufacturing factories, withdrew 66 operation licenses, and imposed criminal penalties on 34 people.