World News
China Executes Former Food and Drug Chief, Draws Up Safety Plan
By
Jul 11, 2007, 08:59

Expat Village is edited and published by Iain Williams in Caracas, Venezuela.

A Bloomberg story by Dune Lawrence at www.bloomberg.net

China, facing global criticism over the quality of food and medicine exports, executed its former chief drug regulator for taking bribes and said it would take five years to stamp out fakes.

Zheng Xiaoyu's death was reported by the state-run Xinhua News Agency today as officials separately outlined a plan to improve drug and food safety, conceding the system isn't strong enough and the trend ``isn't promising.''

China, the world's biggest exporter of consumer products, is under pressure to strengthen regulation after a series of scares ranging from contaminated toothpaste to drug-tainted seafood. The approach of next year's Olympic Games, which will draw an estimated 1.7 million visitors to Beijing, has increased the urgency of bolstering public confidence.

``Corruption in the food and drug authority has brought shame to the nation,'' Yan Jiangying, deputy policy director of the State Food and Drug Administration, formerly headed by Zheng, said at a press conference in Beijing. ``What we'll have to learn from the experience is to improve our work to emphasize the protection of public safety.''

Toothpaste and drugs linked to Chinese producers have been blamed for deaths in Latin America. U.S. authorities halted imports of some Chinese fish, and Toys ``R'' Us Asia Ltd. recalled lead-painted ``Thomas & Friends'' railway toys made in China. Melamine, used to make plastics, was found in pet food blamed for killing cats and dogs in the U.S. earlier this year.

Bribes and Gifts

The government said last month that by 2010 its ability to monitor drug purity should be ``markedly'' improved, while the food safety system should be capable of dealing with accidents and handling food recalls.

China today said it will rotate regulators into different posts and boost rates of drug supervision and sampling inspection to 80 percent from 30 percent.

Zheng Xiaoyu was sentenced to death May 29 for accepting bribes and gifts worth more than 6.5 million yuan ($850,000) when head of the regulator from 1998 to 2005. Six types of fake medicines were approved during his tenure, according to Xinhua.

A Beijing court on Friday meted out another capital sentence, with a two-year reprieve, to Cao Wenzhuang, head of drug registration under Zheng, Xinhua reported on July 6.

Catfish, Eel

The drug regulator plans to improve transparency by accepting applications for drug approvals online, publishing results, and posting information on who evaluated the application, Yan said at today's briefing.

The trend in safety ``isn't promising,'' Yan said. ``The foundation of the work is still weak.''

Yan declined to comment on whether a Chinese company implicated in the export of toxic solvent diethylene glycol that ended up in consumer products in Latin America has been punished.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on June 28 it would detain three types of Chinese farm-raised fish, catfish, basa and dace, as well as shrimp and eel unless suppliers could prove the shipments didn't contain residues from drugs that aren't approved in the U.S.

``The problems have raised concerns and scares, even within Chinese consumer markets, meaning a major cry for the government to set the standards,'' said Zhang Bing, a principal at A.T. Kearney in Shanghai.

Supervisor Overlap

Regulators must address a manufacturing industry that strains enforcement. China has 200 million farms that average 1 to 2 acres (0.4 to 0.8 hectares). Of the nation's 448,000 food processing companies, 79 percent have fewer than 10 employees, according to the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine. Wang Lei, a researcher at the Shenzhen Institute of Standards and Technology, estimates that 30 percent of China's small food manufacturers don't meet hygiene rules.

The food industry also faces overlapping and conflicting regulation and enforcement from at least nine government authorities with responsibility for some aspect of food safety.

The Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Health, for example, have each established different standards for levels of preservative sulfur dioxide in dried vegetables, according to a report on July 3 by the World Health Organization, the Asian Development Bank and China's State Food and Drug Administration.

Officials from the Ministry of Agriculture and the quality and supervision administration said at today's briefing that they will cut down on the fragmentation of farm production and food manufacturing to make enforcement easier.

The country is organizing farmers into cooperatives to increase scale of production and unify standards, said Zhang Yanqiu, vice director of the agriculture ministry's department of market and economic information.

China also aims to cut the number of small food manufacturers 50 percent by 2010 to curb shoddy and counterfeit food, said Wu Jianping, head of the quality and supervision administration's department of food production supervision.

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Expat Village is edited and published by Iain Williams in Caracas, Venezuela.