China Executes Former Food and Drug Head

From 1998 to 2005 during Zheng Xiaoyu’s tenure as China’s Food and Drug honcho, his agency approved six medicines that were fake, pharmaceutical firms falsified documents to get approvals, one antibiotic caused the deaths of 10 people, and Zheng took cash and gifts worth $832,000. China’s Food and Drug safety track record is worse than ours. Last month China admitted that a deadly chemical was in China-manufactured cough syrup. Earlier this year tainted wheat gluten was found in pet foods from China. Toothpaste from China is sweetened with a toxic chemical found in antifreeze, drug-tainted fish from China are turning up around the world, a banned feed additive is in Chinese pork and China still uses a banned dye from Sudan to color egg yolks. China's Food and Drug spokeswoman Yan Jiangyang said the food and drug agency was “working to tighten its safety procedures and create a more transparent operating environment”. But to show its heart is in the right place, China executed its former Food and Drug chief. The United States does not execute government officials who have been convicted of crimes. We commute their sentences so that they see no jail time. It’s a cultural thing. However, China and the US are not so different where the bottom line is concerned. Neither nation endeavors to solve the problems it has made for the world. And both nations are governed by men who have no personal ethical center for knowing right from wrong.