Escaping HTML Strings Within MySQL

Hey,

I am wondering if it is possible to escape HTML strings within MySQL. I want to select a list of criteria from a MySQL table and concatenate them together to form a HTML select menu. However, some of the category names have HTML special characters in them (like < > and &). I am wondering if there is an internal function in MySQL to escapte HTML characters or would it be necessary to write a stored procedure or something along those lines? (Unfortunately I don't have access to MySQL 5.0 so I can't use Stored Procedures).

Thanks for you time!

use the replace function

select replace(replace(replace(categoryname,'&','&'),'<','<'),'>','>') as newname
from ...