Want China Times, Xinhua 2015-04-25
The Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress (NPC), the country's top legislature, adopted an amendment to the 2009 Food Safety Law on Friday with the heaviest penalties yet for offenders.
Health officials check the food at a central kitchen of a campus restaurant at Xinyu No.4 Middle School in Jiangxi province, Sept. 1, 2014. (File photo/Xinhua) |
The Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress (NPC), the country's top legislature, adopted an amendment to the 2009 Food Safety Law on Friday with the heaviest penalties yet for offenders.
With 154
articles, compared with 104 in the original law, the revamped Food Safety Law
adds new articles and provisions on baby formula and online shopping.
China has
been rocked by many food safety scandals in recent years, including injecting
clenbuterol into pork, recycled cooking oil, selling pork from sick pigs,
medicines made with toxic gelatin and passing off rat and fox meat as fit for
human consumption.
The revised
law gives heavier punishment to offenders, increasing the cost for violating
the legislation, said Huang Wei with the Commission for Legislative Affairs of
the NPC Standing Committee.
The new law
will go into effect on Oct. 1.
Stiffer Penalties
The revised
law brings harsher civil, administrative and criminal penalties for offenders
and their supervisors.
The
amendment introduces administrative detention for offenders. Those who add
inedible substances to food could find themselves behind bars for up to 15
days.
Administrative
detention normally refers to that imposed by police without court proceedings.
This has been considered tough, as other punishments stipulated in the Food
Safety Law generally involves fines and revocation of certificates.
Consumers
can now demand reparation of three times any loss they suffer from substandard
food. Previously, only compensation of 10 times the price of the food was
allowed. Substandard food can be very cheap and can cause very serious problems
with consequential losses, hence the new rule guarantees that consumers can get
a higher rate of compensation.
Bigger
fines for offenders are also on the menu. Producers may face fines of up to 30
times the value of their products, up from 10 times. If the products are worth
less than 10,000 yuan (US$1,630), the fines can be upwards of 150,000 yuan
(US$24,213), three times the previous amount.
The
amendment adds provisions for landlords of production sites who turn a blind
eye to illegal activities on the premises and suppliers who sell unlawful
substances to producers, knowing that they will be added to foods. Their
revenue can be seized and they can be fined up to 200,000 yuan (US$32,284).
Administrative
penalties, such as demotion and dismissal, will be imposed on officials with
food and drug regulators who fail in their duty to protect the public or
connive in cover-ups. Similar punishments will be dished out to officials in
health and agriculture departments. Abuse of power and neglect of duty for personal
gain may precipitate criminal penalties.
Baby
Formula
Infant milk
formula will be heavily regulated to restore public confidence in the domestic
dairy industry.
Producers
will be required to register powdered baby milk formula with the food and drug regulator.
Earlier provisions stipulated that firms only needed to ensure their formulas
were on record.
There are
more than 1,900 varieties of baby formula available in China. Each company has
around 20 varieties. In other countries, firms produce and sell only two or
three.
"Some
producers are creating new formulas purely for the sake of marketing,"
according to the Food and Drug Administration.
In 2008,
infant formula produced by the Sanlu Group, a leading dairy firm in north
China, was found to contain melamine. Six babies died and thousands fell ill.
As a result, the first Food Safety Law was enacted in 2009 but public
confidence in domestic baby formula has not recovered. Instead, consumers have
sought out baby formula from countries like Australia, New Zealand and Germany,
which now have strict export quotas for China.
Producers
will now have to test every batch of their product, conduct regular internal
inspections and submit reports to regulators.
Online
Shopping
Online
shopping has become part of daily life in China. Food producers are expanding
their business to instant messaging services like WeChat.
China's
online retail sales totaled 1.9 trillion yuan (US$298.6 billion) in 2013, with
food eating up 32.4 billion (US$5.2 billion) and problems concerning food
safety have emerged. To keep up, the amendment adds new articles on online
shopping, clarifying the liabilities of shopping platforms. They are required
to register the real identity of vendors and check their certificates. The
platforms will have to compensate consumers if they cannot provide the
identity, address and contact details of retailers.
They should
also report malpractice to the government and deny access to delinquent
retailers.
Related Article:
No comments:
Post a Comment