BEIJING, April 25 (Reuters) - Chinese President Hu Jintao has urged the country's farming sector to improve food safety and develop the organic sector, state media said on Wednesday, reflecting widespread anxiety after a series of health scares.

The ruling Communist Party's Politburo -- an inner council with some two dozen members -- listened to reports about food safety and Hu issued his warning, promising stricter rules on growing and processing, the official People's Daily reported.

"Resolving the food problems of 1.3 billion people and improving agricultural returns and farmers' incomes demands that we accelerate implementation of agricultural standardisation," Hu said.

"Without agricultural standardisation, there can be no agricultural modernisation and no assurance of food safety," he added.

"Speed up the development of pollution-free agricultural products, green food and organic food, and push the development of top quality goods," Hu said.

In recent years, China has been shaken by scandals over everything from fake baby milk to carcinogenic fish, blamed on unscrupulous businesses and lax official supervision, fuelling public anger.

Last 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.

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