BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission proposed more unannounced inspections of food companies and tougher fines for labeling fraud on Monday, after the discovery earlier this year that millions of Europeans ate horsemeat labeled as beef. If approved by EU governments and lawmakers, the new rules would force member states to impose fines equal to the financial gains from proven cases of food fraud, officials said.

China has detained 900 people for crimes including selling rat and fox meat as beef and mutton, the public security ministry said, in another blow to the nation's food safety. News of the three-month operation, which related to meat products, added to a string of scandals that have galvanised public concern over food safety in China, from recycled cooking oil to dangerous chemicals in baby milk powder. Altogether there were "382 cases of water-injected meat, fake mutton and beef, diseased meat, toxic and harmful meat products", the ministry said on its website on Thursday.

A Dutch businessman under investigation in a Europe-wide probe into a horse-for-beef food scandal on Thursday was given a suspended sentence and fined 50,000 euros for selling horsemeat as Islamic halal-slaughtered beef in France. A district court in Den Bosch on appeal ordered Jan Fasen, 63, to pay the 50,000 euro ($66,000) fine and also slapped him with a six-month sentence suspended for two years. "The suspect for two years bought horsemeat in Brazil and Mexico after which it was sold on paper as halal-slaughtered beef," the court said in a statement.

A Dutch court on Thursday rejected a bid by a meat wholesaler to quash an order recalling 50,000 tonnes of beef potentially contaminated with horsemeat. "The court rejects the request for a preliminary injunction," on Dutch food authority NVWA's recall of meat handled by Willy Selten, judge Reinier van Zutphen said at the commercial court in The Hague. Businessman Selten, allegedly a key player in Europe's horsemeat scandal, had sought to overturn the NVWA's order to recall all meat sold by the company over the last two years.