Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING, Jan 23 2009 (IPS) – Days before families across China sit down for the Chinese New Year s feast, the country s leaders have moved to restore public confidence in the safety of their repast. A Chinese court has sentenced two men to death and awarded stiff sentences to others implicated in the country s worst food-tampering scam.
The nationwide scandal surrounding milk powder tainted with the industrial chemical melamine that killed at least six infants and sickened nearly 300,000 others followed an initial cover up and prolonged investigation that only provoked more public anger.

Anticipation that the harshest sentences would be issued were running high and the sentences handed down, stiff as they are by international standards, left many cold.

On Thursday, the Intermediate People s Court in Shijiazhuang, Hebei province, ordered the death penalty for Zhang Yujun and Geng Jinping, two middlemen who supplied tainted milk to Sanlu Group, the dairy giant at the centre of the contamination scandal.

Zhang was said to have run a workshop that produced and sold melamine-laced protein-powder to dairy farmers who then mixed the powder into diluted milk to make it appear to have higher protein content. Geng was accused of selling toxic milk to milk collectors.

Tian Wenhua, the former head of Sanlu Group, was convicted to life in prison and fined 24.6 million yuan (3.6 million US dollars). She was found guilty of manufacturing and selling fake and substandard food products.
Her company, the now-bankrupt Sanlu Group, was fined seven million dollars. Three other former executives of Sanlu were sent to prison for between five and 15 years.

This is only the tip of the iceberg, said Hu Yayin, a working mother who, since the scandal broke out, has been paying more to buy imported infant formula for her toddler. How can we trust all the other products since we know that everybody was doing it but only a few people are being punished?

More than 80 percent of the victims were under two years old and babies that were fed solely on milk were the worst affected.

Sanlu is the only firm to have been charged so far. Since its exposure the dairy products of some 22 companies were found contaminated with melamine. The list included market dairy leaders like Yili and Mengniu, and the magnitude of the scandal has triggered a series of recalls of Chinese products overseas.

Adding melamine into raw milk became an open secret, Zhang Yujun was quoted as saying in the court during his trial on Dec.26. The chemical can make milk heavier in weight and also boost false protein readings. It was very popular.

Melamine, generally used in the production of laminates like formica and flooring tiles. The investigation found that, to ensure supply and drive prices down, Sanlu allowed private milk collectors to dilute raw milk with water and then compensated for it by adding melamine.

Addition of melamine to watered-down milk makes protein levels appear higher since standard quality tests estimate protein levels by measuring nitrogen, the basic building block for protein.

The scandal broke out in September right after China celebrated its success in hosting the summer Olympics in Beijing. Sanlu officials are said to have been already aware of infants falling sick after drinking their milk.

Tian Wenhua, who got life in prison, was accused of concealing the contamination problems and carrying on with producing and selling the tainted milk formula.

She should have got the death sentence too, said Niu Wenjun, an electrician and a parent. The others were just greedy but she knew that children were getting sick and could die and she didn t do anything.

Few among those interviewed seemed to think that the political pressure local officials were under could be seen as a mitigating circumstance.

Local authorities in Hebei a major centre of China s dairy industry knew of the contamination in June but they sat on the information for fear that a major food scandal could sabotage China s image just before the carefully scripted Olympic celebrations in Beijing.

Although the head of China s quality watchdog agency, Li Changjiang, was forced to quit over the scandal, Sanlu s Tian Wenhua remains the highest ranking of the 21 people who have been tried in the contamination case.

Sanlu and 21 other dairies implicated in the crisis have offered 30,000 dollars in compensation in case of death of a child, 4,400 dollars for children suffering from serious illnesses like kidney stones and acute kidney failure, and 300 dollars for less severe cases.

Last week, a couple from the impoverished province of Gansu who lost their son because of contaminated milk became the first to accept compensation, surrendering their right to sue over their child s death. But other parents have rejected the offer as too low and demanded lifelong healthcare for their sick babies.

We are not asking for money because all the money in the world can t buy my child s health. We want a lifelong guarantee, Jiang Yalin from Guizhou province said at a press conference organised by a group of victims parents earlier this month in Beijing.

The trial was declared to be an open one, but parents of the victims were kept out of the courthouse. Some who attempted to travel from Beijing to witness the verdict were detained.