China punishes more officials in milk scandal

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Posted on 20th March 2009 by Gordon Johnson in Uncategorized

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Date: 3/20/2009

BEIJING (AP) — China’s Communist Party has punished eight more senior government officials for their roles in last year’s tainted infant formula scandal, a state news agency reported Friday.

Milk laced with the industrial chemical melamine was blamed for the deaths of at least six babies and the sickening of nearly 300,000 others. The scandal forced the head of China’s quality watchdog to resign, and courts have sentenced two men to death for producing the chemical and supplying dairies with toxic milk.

The crisis also highlighted the need for major overhauls in China’s food safety system, and led to a law enacted this month that consolidates hundreds of separate regulations covering the country’s 500,000 food processing companies.

The official Xinhua News Agency said the Communist Party’s disciplinary body removed Wang Bubu, chief of the law enforcement and supervision department at China’s quality watchdog, from his official and party posts. A deputy chief of food circulation supervision at the State Administration for Industry and Commerce was also fired, it said.

Six others — from agencies including the State Food and Drug Administration and the Ministries of Agriculture and Health — received penalties including demotions and having their misdeeds recorded, Xinhua said. Xinhua said all were punished for their failures in supervising.

Several senior city officials were fired last year in Shijiazhuang, the northern Chinese city where the dairy at the heart of the scandal was based. The chairwoman of the company has been sentenced to life in prison.

The scandal has been blamed on middlemen who added melamine, which is high in nitrogen, to watered-down milk to fool quality tests for protein content. Melamine can cause kidney stones and kidney failure.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.

Attorney Gordon Johnson
Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447 :: Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.

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China's milk victims complain of intimidation

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Posted on 17th March 2009 by Gordon Johnson in Uncategorized

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Date: 3/17/2009

By ANITA CHANG
Associated Press Writer

BEIJING (AP) — Families whose children fell ill from tainted milk have come under pressure to drop compensation lawsuits, victims’ advocates said Tuesday, showing the government’s lingering uneasiness over one of China’s worst contamination scandals.

Local officials were calling and visiting at least a half-dozen families, urging them to drop their cases against the dairies and accept a government-sanctioned compensation plan giving 2,000 yuan ($290) to most victims, said Zhao Lianhai, the father of a child sickened by the milk.

At least one family has decided to back out of their lawsuit, said Zhao, who has rallied other families through a Web site he created.

“One parent told me, ‘I’m more than 30 years old but I’ve never before seen the county and village officials. Everyone in the family is really scared,’” said Lu Jun, an AIDS activist who has been working with families of tainted milk victims in central China’s Henan province.

Infant formula contaminated with the industrial chemical melamine was blamed for killing at least six babies and sickening nearly 300,000 across China in the scandal that began in September.

Unscrupulous middlemen are accused of adding melamine, which is high in nitrogen, to watered-down milk to fool quality tests for protein content. When ingested, melamine can cause kidney stones and kidney failure.

The scandal rocked the country, culminating in a law enacted in recent weeks that consolidates hundreds of disparate regulations covering the country’s 500,000 food processing companies.

The accusations that local officials are trying to intimidate victim’s families come despite this month’s announcement by the executive vice president of China’s highest court, Shen Deyong, that parents who rejected the government’s compensation plan were welcome to file lawsuits against the dairies.

It was not clear why local officials would try to stop the families after Shen’s announcement. But different levels of government in China often disagree on how to handle matters, and local officials may see lawsuits as a threat to their authority with the potential to upset stability in their community.

More than 600 families have demanded higher compensation than the government plan offers — one-time payouts using money from dairies named in the scandal. Families that take the money can’t sue for more unless they can prove they were forced to agree to the compensation plan, lawyers have said.

Wang Zhenping, whose 1 1/2-year-old son became ill after drinking contaminated infant formula, said he has received four phone calls from health bureau officials in Henan’s Zhoukou city in the last two weeks. They also have visited his mother’s house twice.

“The last time they called me, I told them to call my lawyer,” he said, planning to continue his legal fight against Sanlu, the dairy at the center of the crisis.

Phones at the Zhoukou city health bureau rang unanswered Tuesday.

Lawyers representing the victims’ families have also run into obstacles in recent days.

Li Jinglin, an attorney who was representing parents of children sickened by Shengyuan brand infant formula, said the Beijing city justice bureau called his law firm last Friday and told his superiors he should not be working on the case. Li said he withdrew from the case but hoped another lawyer could take his spot.

A coalition of lawyers working to sue the 22 dairies named in the scandal is focused primarily on getting at least one case involving the key dairy Sanlu to be accepted by a court in the northern city of Shijiazhuang.

“We just want the courts to accept at least one case as an example,” lawyer Lin Zheng said.

___

Associated Press researcher Xi Yue in Beijing contributed to this report.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.

Attorney Gordon Johnson
Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447 :: Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.

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New Zealand dairy accepts milk scandal verdicts

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Posted on 24th January 2009 by Gordon Johnson in Uncategorized

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Date: 1/24/2009

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand dairy Fonterra said Saturday it accepted a Chinese court’s conviction of 21 people blamed in a deadly contaminated milk scandal, but that it does not condone the death sentences handed to two of them.

Fonterra Group — which had owned 43 percent of China’s Sanlu Group at the center of the scandal — was responsible for alerting Chinese authorities in August that milk had been contaminated with the industrial chemical melamine. By December, Fonterra had written off its $200 million investment in the Chinese dairy group.

On Friday, a Chinese court sentenced to death cattle farmer Zhang Yujun and milk trader Geng Jinping for their parts in the scandal that killed at least six babies and left nearly 300,000 other children sickened. Melamine was added to watered down milk to make it appear to have a higher protein content.

A third man, Gao Junjie, was given a death sentence for endangering public safety, but it was suspended for two years, and may be commuted to life in prison.

The former Sanlu chairwoman, Tian Wenhua, was fined 24.7 million yuan ($2.9 million) and will spend the rest of her life behind bars.

“We accept the court’s findings but Fonterra supports the New Zealand Government’s position on the death penalty,” Fonterra Chief Executive Andrew Ferrier said Saturday. “Fonterra deeply regrets the harm and pain this tragedy has caused so many Chinese families.”

Prime Minister John Key said Friday that New Zealand “does not condone the death sentence, but we respect (China’s) right to take a very serious attitude to what was an extremely serious scandal.”

Sanlu has gone into receivership and the receiver has six months to sell the company’s assets.

Shijiazhuang-based Sanlu Group Co. in Hebei province was the first Chinese milk company to confirm melamine contamination in its infant milk formula products.

More than 30 Chinese dairy companies have since been implicated in the tainted milk scandal.

Fonterra, which controls more than 95 percent of New Zealand’s milk supply, is the country’s largest multinational business, its second-biggest foreign currency earner and accounts for more than 24 percent of the nation’s exports.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.

Attorney Gordon Johnson
Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447 :: Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.

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China: Parents of milk victims demand better deal

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Posted on 23rd January 2009 by Gordon Johnson in Uncategorized

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Date: 1/23/2009

By TINI TRAN
Associated Press Writer

BEIJING (AP) — Chinese parents whose children were sickened after drinking contaminated milk pushed the government for greater accountability and compensation Friday, a day after a court handed down two death penalties and long prison terms for 19 other defendants.

Milk formula laced with the industrial chemical melamine has been blamed for causing the deaths of at least six infants and sickening nearly 300,000 others with kidney stones and other problems.

Zhao Lianhai, a parent who has rallied families through a Web site he created that details the crisis, said Friday that he and three others were presenting a petition to the Ministry of Health.

The petition, signed by some 550 parents, calls for free medical care and follow-up services for all victims, reimbursement for treatment already paid for, and further research into the long-term health effects of melamine among other demands.

“Children are the future of every family, and moreover, they are the future of this country,” the petition said. “As consumers, we have been greatly damaged.”

But state television reported Friday that most of the families had accepted payouts offered by the 22 dairies responsible for the contamination under a government-led plan.

The report is indicative of the communist leadership’s eagerness to bring an end to the embarrassing scandal. It also appeared to be trying to portray parents who were rejecting the payments as out of step with the majority.

Jiang Yaling, a parent from Guizhou, said the parents who are asking for a better deal held a meeting with several Health Ministry officials on Friday. She said the officials pledged to “respect our petition” and process it quickly.

“It’s not a matter of what the officials say to us, but it’s a matter of what they do. If these demands are not met, my child could have a life span of only 10 years. What kind of life is that? My child is my everything,” Jiang said.

The Health Ministry did not immediately respond to a faxed list of questions from The Associated Press.

Jiang said the group also planned to submit the same petition to the China Dairy Association and China’s food safety regulators later in the day.

The 22 dairy companies involved in the scandal have proposed a 1.1 billion yuan ($160 million) compensation plan. Families whose children died would receive 200,000 yuan ($29,000), while others would receive 30,000 yuan ($4,380) for serious cases of kidney stones and 2,000 yuan ($290) for less severe cases.

The China Dairy Association said the distribution of compensation payments was nearly complete, and that than 262,000 families — or 90 percent of the official total — had accepted the dairies’ offers by Thursday, CCTV reported.

Calls to the dairy association rang unanswered.

Many parents who rejected the compensation payments say they were inadequate and complained that the plan did not have the families’ input.

On Thursday, 21 defendants blamed in the milk scandal were sentenced, including the former general manager and chairwoman of Sanlu Group Co., the dairy at the center of the scandal.

Tian Wenhua, 66, the highest-ranking executive charged in the food safety crisis, was given life imprisonment while three other company executives got sentences between five and 15 years.

Investigations showed that middlemen who sold milk to dairy companies including Sanlu were watering down raw milk, then mixing in melamine to make it appear to have a higher protein content.

One of those middlemen, Geng Jinping, who supplied hundreds of tons of melamine-tainted milk to Sanlu, was sentenced to death. Also condemned was Zhang Yujun, who ran a workshop that produced melamine-tainted powder branded as protein powder.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.

Attorney Gordon Johnson
Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447 :: Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.

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213 China families take milk case to highest court

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Posted on 19th January 2009 by Gordon Johnson in Uncategorized

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Date: 1/19/2009

By GILLIAN WONG
Associated Press Writer

BEIJING (AP) — More than 200 families whose babies fell ill after drinking tainted infant formula said Monday they are taking their case to China’s highest court after being repeatedly ignored by lower courts.

The lawsuit involving 213 families poses a challenge to the government’s attempts to end one of the country’s worst food safety crises. The scandal over milk spiked with an industrial chemical has been blamed for the deaths of six babies and the sickening of nearly 300,000 others with kidney stones and kidney failure.

The 22 Chinese dairies involved have proposed a 1.1 billion yuan ($160 million) compensation plan, but many parents want higher compensation and long-term treatment for their babies.

“The reason why I’m bringing this case to court is not about money but about my child’s future,” said Zhang Ge, a single mother in Beijing who quit her job at an Internet advertising company to look after her sick son.

Beijing attorney Xu Zhiyong said lawyers for the families mailed an application Friday to the Supreme People’s Court in Beijing to sue the dairies.

But it seemed unlikely the court would hear the lawsuit, given that lower courts have so far refused to hear at least a dozen lawsuits in the politically sensitive scandal.

The lawyers’ group has not been notified if the application has been received. Phone calls to the inquiry office of the Supreme People’s Court rang unanswered Monday.

The government and the dairy companies had hoped the nationwide payout scheme would ease public anger. Instead, it has given embittered, outspoken parents across the country a common cause.

Xu said the lawsuit seeks 36 million yuan ($5.3 million) in total compensation for the families. It also demands payment of medical expenses incurred from tainted milk-related problems for the rest of the victims’ lives.

“The compensation being offered is just too little,” Xu said in a phone interview. “The parents are also not happy about the plan to give free medical care only till 18 years of age.”

Previous applications to sue Sanlu Group Co., the dairy at the center of the scandal, in lower courts in Hebei, where the company is based, were ignored, Xu said.

Investigations have found that milk suppliers added melamine, which like protein is rich in nitrogen, to watered-down milk to fool quality tests for protein content. Melamine, a chemical used to make plastics and fertilizers, can cause kidney stones and kidney failure.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.

Attorney Gordon Johnson
Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447 :: Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.

http://subtlebraininjury.com :: http://brainanatomyguide.com :: http://car-accident-rain.com :: http://tbilaw.com
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