According
to Yahoo News, Chinese police have broken up a criminal ring accused of taking
meat from rats and foxes and selling it as lamb in the country's latest food
safety scandal.
The
Ministry of Public Security released results of a three-month crackdown on food
safety violators, saying in a statement that authorities investigated more than
380 cases and arrested 904 suspects.
Among
those arrested were 63 people who allegedly ran an operation in Shanghai and
the coastal city of Wuxi that bought fox, mink, rat and other meat that had not
been tested for quality and safety, processed it with additives like gelatin
and passed it off as lamb.
The meat
was sold to farmers' markets in Jiangsu province and Shanghai, it said.
Despite
years of food scandals — from milk contaminated with an industrial chemical to
the use of industrial dyes in eggs — China has been unable to clean up its food
supply chain.
The
announcement came as China's top court on Friday issued guidelines calling for
harsher punishment for making and selling unsafe food products in the latest
response to tainted food scandals that have angered the public.
The
Supreme People's Court said the guidelines will list as crimes specific acts
such as the sale of food excessively laced with chemicals or made from animals
that have died from disease or unknown causes.
China's
penal code, which forbids unsafe and poisonous food, does not specify what acts
are considered in violation of the law.
Adulterating
baby food so that it severely lacks nutrition is also punishable as a crime
under the guidelines. Negligent government food inspectors are also targeted
for criminal punishment.
The
supreme court said 2,088 people have been prosecuted in 2010-2012 in 1,533 food
safety cases. It said the number of such cases has grown exponentially in the
past several years. For example, Chinese courts prosecuted 861 cases of
poisonous food in 2012, compared to 80 cases in 2010.
"The
situation is really grave and has indeed caused great harm to the people,"
Pei Xianding, a supreme court judge, told a news conference.
"We
cannot tolerate it any longer. We must punish the criminals severely, or we
cannot answer to our people," Pei said.
May God protect us
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