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.
