China Is Finally Taking Food Safety Seriously

When it comes to food, China is hoping that its citizens will finally be proud of the "Made in China" label.

The country, consistently plagued with food safety scandals like fast food suppliers repackaging expired meat and more recently, more than 100 people arrested for turning diseased pigs being into bacon, is adding stricter controls and harsher punishments to help ensure the well-being of nearly 1.4 billion people.

China's top legislative body approved the 50 new articles, which come into effect October 1. They are the first changes to China's food law since it came into effect in 2009 and include larger fines, job demotion or termination for health officials failing to do their job, and reparations from consumers affected by bad food. The new laws are tough, though the country did execute two people in 2009 for their involvement in the melamine-tainted milk scandal that killed six infants. Hard to top that, really.

The amendments will also have a tighter approval process on baby formula in an attempt to get Chinese parents buying local brands again. Since the formula scandal broke in 2008, foreign powdered milk from Hong Kong, New Zealand, as well as European and North American nations have been as coveted as designer handbags, causing retailers to experience shortages and place limits on how much formula customers can buy at a time. The country's $300 billion online retail industry will also be covered, as retailers have to provide consumers information basic contact information, as well as clarify any fine print.

Still, whether this will finally stop China from becoming the sphincter-clenching butt of food jokes is uncertain as a recent audit on the country's food producers found that nearly half of them aren't up to snuff, and 70 percent of its half-million food production companies have fewer than ten employees. "These are horror stories, obviously," AsiaInspection's vice president Mathieu Labasse told CNN in January. "We find factories hat just have no basic idea about hygiene standards. People that handle the food, they have no gloves, nothing."