Beijing residents will be able to check up sanitary records of local restaurants by one click of computer mouse at the end of this year.

By then, the China capital will have put online sanitary conditions of over 20,000 restaurants, in its latest attempts to ensure food safety, according to the municipal information office.

It said the city can collect food safety information from 39 domestic and overseas websites, enabling it to issue timely warnings to the public.

Beijing will focus more on the supervision of manufacturing, transportation, storage and consumption of food. It strives to avoid supervision loopholes which are often blamed for food safety scares, reported Thursday's Beijing Daily Messenger.

The recent scares in China include parasite-infested snails, steroid-tainted pork, cancer-causing turbot and ducks and hens that were fed cancer-causing Sudan dye to make their yolks red.

In one case, four people who were sickened after eating snails in Beijing's Shuguoyanyi Restaurant this summer are suing the municipal health bureau for failing to warn the public for weeks after it learned of the danger.

(Xinhua News Agency November 24, 2006)