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Future food safety offenders may be locked up

Source: Xinhua | December 22, 2014, Monday | Online Edition

THE draft revision to China's Food Safety Law, tabled for its second reading on Monday, toughens penalties on offenders by imposing detention.

Offenders who add inedible substances to foods will be put under five to 15 days of detention, according to the bill submitted to the bi-monthly legislative session of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee.

Administrative detention normally refers to the maximum 15-day detention imposed by police without court proceedings.
This is considered a tough penalty since punishments specified in the Food Safety Law mostly involve fines and revoking certificates.

For more serious offences, the suspects will be subject to the Criminal Law. But lawmakers at the first reading in August argued that the current law does not have very clear regulations on what kind of offenses should be considered violations of criminal law.

The new version of the bill also adds a provision to punish producers for adding expired raw material and food additives to their products.

According to the bill, the fine on producers will be ten to 20 times the products' value if they are worth more than 10,000 yuan (1,631 US dollars). For products worth less than 10,000 yuan, the fine will be 50,000 to 100,000 yuan. Production certificates will be revoked for serious offences.

The provision recalls a shocking food scandal in July, when Shanghai Husi Food Co. Ltd, a supplier to leading fast food brands including McDonald's and KFC, was exposed for using reprocessed expired meat in its products. Six of the company's senior executives were arrested.

Monday's version of the bill also forces landlords of production sites to share joint liability with producers if they know that illegal activities were happening on their property.

However, it exempts distributors from punishment if they have evidence to support that they followed legal procedures and were unaware of suppliers' offenses.

The bill further clarifies regulations on controversial issues such as genetically modified foods and toxic pesticides.
The new version requires producers to label their products if they contain genetically modified ingredients listed by the Ministry of Agriculture.

Since the country still stocks certain highly toxic pesticides for emergency use and a full ban is not realistic, an article will be added stating that the government encourages the use of low toxicity pesticides and will speed up the process to fully ban highly toxic pesticides. It also will impose administrative detention on offenders who illegally use highly toxic pesticides.

In addition, the bill eases import procedures for mainstream dietary supplements such as vitamin and mineral supplements. Importers will only need to inform authorities when they first import these products.
But they will have to register with authorities for imported dietary supplements that use new ingredients or have never been imported before.

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