Barbaric Solution with Chinese Olympic Shame: -- China Executes Ex-Food
and Drug Chief

-- Micky's comment: Let China, a nation whose behavior remains in the
darkness of medieval barbarism, to host Olympic games, is a disgrace to
humanity, a disgrace to Olympic spirit! --

Associated Press
China Executes Ex-Food and Drug Chief
By ANITA CHANG 07.10.07, 1:48 PM ET

China executed a former director of its food and drug agency Tuesday for
approving fake medicine in exchange for cash, illustrating how serious
Beijing is about tackling product safety, while officials announced
steps to safeguard food at next summer's Olympic Games.

The measures include ensuring athletes' food is free of substances that
could trigger a positive result in tests for banned
performance-enhancing drugs. Many of China's recent food woes have been
tied to the purity of ingredients, flavoring, artificial colors and
other additives.

During Zheng Xiaoyu's tenure as head of the State Food and Drug
Administration from 1997 to 2006, the agency approved six untested drugs
that turned out to be fake, and some drug-makers used falsified
documents to apply for approvals, according to state media reports. One
antibiotic caused the deaths of at least 10 people.

"The few corrupt officials of the SFDA are the shame of the whole system
and their scandals have revealed some very serious problems," agency
spokeswoman Yan Jiangying said at a news conference Tuesday highlighting
efforts to improve China's track record on food and drug safety.

Next year's Beijing Olympics, a great source of pride for China, also
has been targeted in the crackdown on unsafe food. Sun Wenxu, an
official with the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, told
reporters that athletes, coaches, officials and others can be assured of
safe meals.

"All the procedures involving Olympic food, including production,
processing, packaging, storing and transporting will be closely
monitored," Sun said.

Food and drug agency spokeswoman Yan acknowledged the agency's
supervision remains unsatisfactory and that it has been slow to tackle
the problem.

"China is a developing country and our supervision of food and drugs
started quite late and our foundation for this work is weak, so we are
not optimistic about the current food and drug safety situation," she said.

Fears abroad over Chinese-made drugs were sparked last year by the
deaths of dozens of people in Panama who took medicine contaminated with
diethylene glycol - a thickening agent used in antifreeze - imported
from China. It was passed off as harmless glycerin.

Chinese-made toothpaste containing diethylene glycol has been banned in
North and South America and Asia, though there have been no reports of
health problems stemming from the product. China has no guideline
banning the chemical in toothpaste, and the government says it is
harmless in small amounts.

In the United States and Canada, pet food containing Chinese wheat
gluten tainted with the chemical melamine has been blamed for the deaths
of dogs and cats. Since then, U.S. authorities have turned away or
recalled toxic fish, juice containing unsafe color additives and popular
toy trains decorated with lead paint.

The list of food scares within China over the past year includes
drug-tainted fish, industrial dye used to color egg yolks red and pork
tainted with a banned feed additive.

Zheng's death sentence was unusually severe even for China, which is
believed to carry out more court-ordered executions than all other
nations combined, and indicates the communist leadership's determination
to confront the country's dire product safety record.

Zheng, 63, was convicted of taking cash and gifts worth $832,000 when he
was in charge of the food and drug agency.

He was sentenced to death on May 29 and his appeal was rejected on June
12 by the Higher People's Court of Beijing. China's Supreme Court
approved the sentence, saying Zheng "committed vile crimes and caused
extreme harm to society."

"Although he confessed to some of the crimes of bribe-taking and
returned some of the illegal income, it was not enough for leniency,"
the court said.

Zheng's execution Tuesday morning was confirmed by state television and
the official Xinhua News Agency.

"We should seriously reflect and learn lessons from these cases. We
should step up our efforts to ensure food and drug safety, which is what
we are doing now and what we will do in the future," Yan said.

Cao Wenzhuang, a former director of the food and drug agency's drug
registration department, was sentenced to death last week for accepting
bribes and dereliction of duty. He was given a two-year reprieve, which
usually means he can get life in prison if deemed to have reformed.

Yan said the food and drug agency was working to tighten its safety
procedures and create a more transparent operating environment. The
administration has announced a series of measures to tighten safety
controls and closed factories where illegal chemicals or other problems
were found.

The General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and
Quarantine posted on its Web site Monday the names of 13 companies that
have been banned from exporting after their products were found to be
substandard.

The products included rice cakes, cooked mushrooms, preserved pears and
several kinds of seafood bound for Europe, Japan and North America.
Problems included evasion of inspection and quarantine, as well as
excessive bacteria and sulfur dioxide in the food or the presence of
banned drugs.

Meanwhile, authorities promised to investigate water purity after a
newspaper reported that more than half of the water coolers in Beijing
use counterfeit branded water.

The Beijing Times reported that water jugs are filled with either tap
water or purified water from small suppliers and sealed with bogus
quality standard marks.

The report said the practice is widespread because water from major
suppliers can cost twice as much as water from other sources.

Wu Jianping, an official with the General Administration of Quality
Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, noted that a May inspection of
Beijing's drinking water products found more than 96 percent were safe.

"Problems found with some individual cases cannot be interpreted to mean
that the entire water industry has problems," Wu said.

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