BEIJING - Beijing will shut restaurants that fail to meet basic sanitary standards as part of a drive to ensure food safety during the 2008 Olympic Games, a municipal official said on Wednesday.

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The Chinese capital's Health Bureau is in the process of classifying the city's 30,000 restaurants into four grades based on several factors, with the most important being sanitation.

"Any restaurant running without a sanitary license, health certificate or not following the sanitary requirements will be closed starting today," Jin Dapeng, director general of Beijing's Health Bureau, told a news conference.

"Beijing will embrace friends from all over the world and we will make them feel safe and secure when eating in China," he added.

China has suffered a spate of food safety scares over the past few years.

In August, nearly 40 people in Beijing contracted meningitis after they ate raw or partially cooked snails at a chain of Sichuan restaurants.

In 2004, a major health scandal erupted when China revealed that at least 13 babies had died from malnutrition in the country's impoverished eastern province of Anhui after being fed fake baby milk.

Jin said Beijing had seen 68 cases of food poisoning involving 753 people in 2006 but no restaurants were shut down.