Two pharmacy firms were punished for producing 210,000 doses of substandard human rabies vaccines, said the State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA)?in Beijing?Saturday.

The Jiangsu-based Ealong Biotech was found deliberately using inferior materials, failing to follow legal manufacturing procedures and cheating the supervisors, said a statement from the SFDA.

The SFDA revoked its licence of producing rabies vaccines, confiscated all illegal revenue and imposed a fine, three times the vaccines' value, which totaled 25.64 million yuan (3.77 million U.S. dollars), the statement said.

The company's seven executives and other employees directly involved in malpractice were banned from pharmacy production and related businesses for ten years. Those breaking the laws have been handed to prosecutors, the statement said.

In another case, the Hebei-based Bioforwell Co. was found violating relevant regulations in vaccine production, the statement said.

The SFDA also confiscated the company's all illegal revenue and imposed a fine, three times the problematic vaccines' value, which totaled 5.64 million yuan (829, 000 dollars).

The company's two employees directly involved were banned from pharmacy production or related businesses for ten years.

The SFDA announced in last December that a total of 215,800 units of rabies vaccines made by the two drug makers from July to October 2008 had quality problems and had ordered the two companies to halt production and sales.

The authorities have traced the whereabout of substandard vaccines and revaccinated those injected the substandard vaccines, the statement said.

The SFDA had received no reports of adverse cases from the substandard vaccines, it added.