Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Mainland censors are tightening their grip on the media and limiting negative news reports, especially on food safety. Media outlets that report on food safety have been punished. In such an atmosphere of state-sponsored media crackdown a US delegation arrives in Beijing today on a mission to improve food and drug safety.

The Publicity Department of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee, the city's top censorship body, has ordered a popular tabloid, the Beijing Daily Messenger, to scrap its political and social pages and cover instead entertainment and lifestyle stories.

An estimated one-third of the newspaper's 100 or so reporters will lose their jobs when the 40-page daily shrinks, as expected, to 32 pages starting tomorrow.

The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reports that The First, a daily launched in December 2004, has also come under pressure from Beijing censors to focus only on sports, but a formal order has not been handed down.

Other newspapers under the control of the Beijing propaganda authorities like Beijing Youth Daily and Beijing Evening News have also been warned against running negative news about food safety.

Shanghai censors issued an order to Shanghai press that all reports related to food safety be held unless they are confirmed by the local food quality administration bureau, a local source said.

The news black-out came last week after punishment was dished out to Beijing Television after a freelance reporter was arrested and several executives censured or sacked for bogus footage of a street vendor stuffing steamed buns with cardboard in lieu of pork.

For analysts the bogus buns scandal gave the authorities the pretext to censor news about the most worrisome issue in China and the world, namely the export from China of toxic fish, lethal pet food and poisonous cough syrup.

Ironically, the Beijing Daily Messenger was the only Beijing newspaper not to pursue the cardboard-buns story.

Food safety remains at the top of public interest and it is hard for media not to cover it.

With such reporting virtually banned, CCTV’s Weekly Quality Report, a programme famous for exposing food safety problems, has toned down its reports in its latest broadcasts. In a recent one it limited itself to informing people on how to tell real honey from fake.

It is in this atmosphere that a US delegation has arrived in Beijing today on a five-day fact-finding mission on food and drug safety.

US regulatory agencies are concerned about the insufficient infrastructure in China to assure the safety, quality and effectiveness of many export products.

For this reason the US Food and Drug Administration banned last month imports of Chinese farm-raised catfish, basa fish, shrimp, dace and eel.

China in turn tightened inspections of US imports at its ports, and halted shipments of poultry, pigeons and meat as unsafe.

But China-US trade is essential to both and the US Department of Health and Human Services expressed hope to have “strong, action-oriented documents” by December.