After a series of food safety scandals that have received worldwide media coverage and made China infamous for its standards and questionable practices in food production, China is cracking down on food safety violations with unprecedented severity. This week the Supreme People’s Court of China issued a directive noting that criminals convicted of unsafe food practices should be handed harsher penalties and longer prison terms and, in cases where people die from food safety violations, those convicted could face the death penalty.
"The overall food safety situation is stable and improving, but incidents that still occur regularly have seriously endangered people's lives and caused strong social reactions," said China’s top judge Wang Shengjun in the directive according to a CNN report. "Our task to maintain food safety remains challenging."
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Some of those incidents include cases of soy sauce manufactured from human hair, watermelons exploding due to chemical exposure, and a particularly widely reported incident where milk and baby formula tainted with melamine plastic led to the deaths of several children. All of these incidents and more have left consumers in China and abroad understandably unable to put their faith in Chinese food products and exports.
CNN also reports that China’s Supreme People’s Court only recently reduced its number of crimes punishable by death from 55 to 13, and instructed lower courts to suspend death sentences by two years unless the court deems it absolutely “necessary.” China’s Supreme People’s Court has backtracked slightly on these directives, however, to make room for its new hardline stance on food safety violations.
