SHANGHAI (March 04 2010): A court in
Shanghai sentenced three DAIRY executives to
jail Wednesday for making and selling milk
products tainted with melamine, blamed for
the deaths of infants in a 2008 scandal,
state media said. The former deputy
general manager of Shanghai Panda DAIRY, a
firm put on a black list during the scandal,
was given five years prison and fined
400,000 yuan (59,000 dollars), the official
Xinhua news agency said.
The ex-general manager of the company and
another of his deputies were sentenced to
four-and-a-half years and three years
jail respectively, and fined a total of
500,000 yuan, the report added. They were
all found guilty of producing and selling
toxic and hazardous food after Panda DAIRY
reused tainted condensed milk sent back to
the firm by a client in 2008 after the
melamine scandal erupted.
The industrial chemical had been added to
milk products to make them appear higher in
protein content, causing the deaths of
at least six infants and sickening 300,000
others in China. The scandal led to huge
recalls world-wide. The court on
Wednesday found that the three executives
had decided to save money and pour the
tainted DAIRY products back into condensed
milk that was being made from scratch, the
report said.
Both the court and the prosecutors were
unavailable for comment. The latest case
came as milk powder tainted with melamine
was found to have re-emerged throughout the
country earlier this year, causing
widespread concern. A total of 21 people
have
been convicted for their roles in the 2008
scandal. Two of those were executed and Tian
Wenhua, the former boss of Sanlu, the
DAIRY firm at the heart of the scandal, was
given life in prison.
Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2010
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