China sentences former top drug regulator to death, installs food recall system

A Chinese court ordered the death penalty against the country's former top drug regulator Tuesday, convicting him of taking bribes to approve substandard medicines, including an antibiotic blamed for at least 10 deaths.

The sentencing of Zheng Xiaoyu came as the government announced plans for its first recall system for unsafe products.

The sentencing and the recall plan are among the most dramatic steps by China to address growing concern over shoddy and unsafe Chinese goods _ from pet food ingredients and toothpaste mixed with induso trial chemicals to tainted antibiotics.

The sentence was heavy even for China, which is believed to carry out more court-ordered executions than all other nations combined _ and likely indicates the leadership's determination to deal with the recent scares involving unsafe food and drugs.

"The Chinese government attaches great importance to the safety and security of food," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said at a regular briefing Tuesday when asked about Zheng's case. "We stand ready to work with the international community to safeguard the quality and reputation of the Chinese food industry."

Zheng was convicted by Beijing's No. 1 Intermediate People's Court of taking bribes worth more than $832,000 while he was director of the State Food and Drug Administration, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Those bribes allowed eight companies to get around drug approval standards, it said.

Zheng also failed to make "careful arrangements for the supervision of medicine production, which is of critical importance to people's lives," Xinhua said, citing the court. Under his watch, six types of medicine approved were fake and pharmaceutical companies got away with using false documents to apply for approvals, it said. No other details were given.

Zheng's acts "greatly undermined ... the efficiency of China's drug monitoring and supervision, endangered public life and health and had a very negative social impact," the court said.

The punishment was appropriate given the "huge amount of bribes involved and the great damage inflicted on the country and the public," Xinhua said.

In one instance, an antibiotic approved by Zheng's agency killed at least 10 patients last year before it was taken off the market.

In its noon newscast, state television showed a gray-haired Zheng, 62, flanked by court police, who handcuffed him while the verdict was being read.

Meanwhile, China's first food recall measures will be implemented by the end of the year, an official from the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, China's main food safety agency, was cited as saying.

"All domestic and foreign food producers and distributors will be obliged to follow the system," Wu Jianping, director general of the administration's food production and supervision department, was quoted as saying by the state-run China Daily newspaper.

The recall system will be put in place gradually and will focus on "potentially dangerous and unapproved food products," the report said.

The report did not provide further details and the inspection agency refused to comment.

Current regulations on product inspection, issued in 2002, mention the need for a food recall system but the issue has never been systematically addressed, the China Daily said.

In recent months, tainted Chinese pet food ingredients have been blamed for the deaths of cats and dogs in North America, and toothpaste from China mixed with an industrial chemical has been found on shelves in Central America and the Caribbean.

The same chemical, diethylene glycol, was cited in the deaths since October of at least 51 people in Panama who had taken medicine made from diethylene glycol shipped from China and falsely labeled as harmless glycerin.

The China Daily also said the State Food and Drug Administration, the agency formerly run by the disgraced Zheng, will blacklist food producers who break rules.

Food safety problem is a serious problem across the vast country, with China's Health Ministry reporting almost 34,000 food-related illnesses in 2005.