Top court calls for harsher food safety punishments
By Xu Chi |
May 4, 2013, Saturday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
MAKING and selling unsafe food products will result in prison sentences, China's supreme court said yesterday in response to a surging number of tainted food scandals.
The Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate issued interpretations that specify crimes related to food safety and set standards for the punishment for these crimes, court spokesman Sun Jungong told a press conference.
The explanations are believed to form a more rigorous system to punish crimes that threaten food safety, he said.
"The food safety situation is still very grave, because the number of crimes undermining food safety has been climbing with notorious cases related to food safety occurring now and then," he said, citing particular cases involving the use of chemicals while processing meat products and the production of toxic bean sprouts.
Anyone using harmful or toxic materials during food processing, such as producing cooking oil from swill oil, will face sentences of up to five years in jail.
Previously punishments could include fines and prison for more serious offenses. Now jail will be the only option.
The same punishment awaits those who illegally add drugs into health products, such as adding Viagra into men's health products or sibutramine into slimming products, two violations that are common in China.
For more serious cases where there is damage to health, the punishments could be up to 10 years in jail.
Courts across the country heard 1,533 cases involving the production or sale of harmful or toxic food from 2010 to 2012, and 2,088 people were punished, court officials told a press conference in Beijing.
They said the number of such cases had grown exponentially in the past few years.
For example, Chinese courts handled 861 cases of poisonous food in 2012, compared to 80 cases in 2010. The number of people punished in those cases had increased by almost 260 percent over the previous year, court officials said.
"We hope this explanation will be a strong tool for police and judicial authorities," Pei Xianding, a supreme court judge, told the news conference.
"The situation is really grave and has indeed caused great harm to the people."
Harsher punishments were necessary to combat food scandals, he said. "We cannot tolerate it any longer. We must punish the criminals severely, or we cannot answer to our people."
Li Fangping, a Beijing lawyer who represented victims in a tainted milk scandal, told The Associated Press that the guidelines were more of a political statement than a judicial document, as existing laws could sufficiently address food safety violations.
"It is a response to widespread public dissatisfaction," Li said.
Food safety scandals in China have been emerging one after another in recent years, Xinhua news agency reported.
In the melamine-tainted infant formula scandal in 2008, at least six children died and 300,000 fell ill.
Pork adulterated with clenbuterol, cooking oil recycled from leftovers in restaurants, pork from diseased pigs and toxic gelatin for medicine capsule production have all been found in recent years, with the latest case involving the manufacture of fake mutton and beef from rat, fox and mink meat by adding chemicals.
These crimes have severely harmed public health, economic order and society, Sun added.
The Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate issued interpretations that specify crimes related to food safety and set standards for the punishment for these crimes, court spokesman Sun Jungong told a press conference.
The explanations are believed to form a more rigorous system to punish crimes that threaten food safety, he said.
"The food safety situation is still very grave, because the number of crimes undermining food safety has been climbing with notorious cases related to food safety occurring now and then," he said, citing particular cases involving the use of chemicals while processing meat products and the production of toxic bean sprouts.
Anyone using harmful or toxic materials during food processing, such as producing cooking oil from swill oil, will face sentences of up to five years in jail.
Previously punishments could include fines and prison for more serious offenses. Now jail will be the only option.
The same punishment awaits those who illegally add drugs into health products, such as adding Viagra into men's health products or sibutramine into slimming products, two violations that are common in China.
For more serious cases where there is damage to health, the punishments could be up to 10 years in jail.
Courts across the country heard 1,533 cases involving the production or sale of harmful or toxic food from 2010 to 2012, and 2,088 people were punished, court officials told a press conference in Beijing.
They said the number of such cases had grown exponentially in the past few years.
For example, Chinese courts handled 861 cases of poisonous food in 2012, compared to 80 cases in 2010. The number of people punished in those cases had increased by almost 260 percent over the previous year, court officials said.
"We hope this explanation will be a strong tool for police and judicial authorities," Pei Xianding, a supreme court judge, told the news conference.
"The situation is really grave and has indeed caused great harm to the people."
Harsher punishments were necessary to combat food scandals, he said. "We cannot tolerate it any longer. We must punish the criminals severely, or we cannot answer to our people."
Li Fangping, a Beijing lawyer who represented victims in a tainted milk scandal, told The Associated Press that the guidelines were more of a political statement than a judicial document, as existing laws could sufficiently address food safety violations.
"It is a response to widespread public dissatisfaction," Li said.
Food safety scandals in China have been emerging one after another in recent years, Xinhua news agency reported.
In the melamine-tainted infant formula scandal in 2008, at least six children died and 300,000 fell ill.
Pork adulterated with clenbuterol, cooking oil recycled from leftovers in restaurants, pork from diseased pigs and toxic gelatin for medicine capsule production have all been found in recent years, with the latest case involving the manufacture of fake mutton and beef from rat, fox and mink meat by adding chemicals.
These crimes have severely harmed public health, economic order and society, Sun added.
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