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Crime and punishment

(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-01-23 07:37

Capital punishment for two accused and different terms in prison for 19 have rung the curtain down on the first stage of the trial into the biggest ever food safety scandal in China. Thirty-nine other suspects are yet to be tried. But there is reason to believe that the trial and the punishment mark the beginning of a long-standing fight against contaminated food.

The offender who produced the melamine, the poisoned additive, was sentenced to death. And so was another offender who directly added the additive into raw milk before selling it to the manufacturer. Tian Wenhua, chairwoman of the board of directors of Sanlu Group, has been sentenced to life imprisonment.

With the victims - six kids dead and more than 290,000 left with various urinary tract ailments, including kidney stones - and 60 suspects arrested, the verdicts on the first group of offenders yesterday caught the attention of the entire country.

But people are interested not just about how many years the offenders would stay behind bars for their crimes. The public response was also because it was the first case of its kind, involving even the chairwoman of the board of directors of a well-known dairy firm.

The parents of many infant victims should feel relieved because justice has finally prevailed.

Tian, the top leader of Sanlu Group, deserves the punishment she has got. It was impossible for her to have been ignorant of what had happened to so many babies who suffered from kidney stones after drinking baby milk food her company had made.

Tian, 66, worked her way up from a low-level technician and played a pivotal role in developing the firm into one of the most important baby formula manufacturers in the country.

She could have retired with pride for what she had done for her firm if she had taken action immediately after being informed of babies being poisoned by the formula of her firm. It was her efforts that had helped her firm develop into a dairy giant, but it was also her reluctance to act at a critical moment and her wrong decision that led her firm to bankruptcy.

Her rise and fall should serve as a warning to those at the helm of big enterprises, either State-owned or private: They must be clear about what they are doing and what they should do when their decision makes a difference to not only the future of their workers but to the wellbeing of customers who use their products.

The death penalties and jail terms given to the rest of the offenders also serve as a reminder that a sensible society cannot allow anyone to make profit at the expense of other people's lives.

The verdicts, however, are not the end of the case. The process for the victims to get compensations has just started.

The trial of this case will hopefully set a precedent for handling similar cases in the future. It will hopefully create a better climate for food safety.

(China Daily 01/23/2009 page8)