CRI听力:Stronger Penalties for Food Safety Law Violators

The revised laws will include much stronger civil, administrative and criminal penalties for both offenders and their supervisors.

Those who violate the new food safety laws will face fines of up to 30 times the value of their products.

The current penalties have a maximum of 10 times the value of their products sold.

Food safety scandals have become far-too commonplace in China in recent years, including clenbuterol in pork, recycled cooking oil, pork harvested from sick pigs, medicine made with toxic gelatin and rat and fox meat passed off as being fit for human consumption... to name just a few.

Xiao Wei with China's Supreme People's Procuratorate says cases like this have created unease among Chinese consumers.

"Food safety is a major concern for the people's life and health. In recent years, all levels of law enforcement have been trying to intensify their efforts to crack down the crimes that produce fake or poisonous food and medicine."

The new amendments to the food safety laws also have specific language to deal with production supervisors who turn a blind-eye on illegal activities, as well as those who sell products to those producers who know it’s going to be illegally added to foods.

Huo Yapeng, an inspector with the Supreme People's Procuratorate, says regulators are going to have zero tolerance for government officials who also break the rules.

"Law enforcement is going to be paying special attention to food producing license and the use of food additives. We also have held zero tolerance and strictly investigate any malpractice by food safety regulators."

From the start of last year, around 650 government officials have come under investigation for violations of food safety rules.

Of them, around 430 cases involve charges of dereliction of duty, abuse of power, embezzlement and taking bribes.

Xiao Wei with the Supreme People's Procuratorate says issues connected to food safety are always evolving.

"Apart from issuing heavy penalties on food safety crimes, we are also hoping to strengthen crime prevention. We are planning to launch an educational drive to help better inform food producers about the need to put food safety as the priority to ensure people's health."

Prosecutors are also promising a new focus on food additives in the future.

For CRI, I'm Luo Bin.