A final note, perhaps, on the toxic China stories that've been all the rage lately.

China has just had their equivalent of our Food and Drug Administration chief sentenced to death. Zheng Xiaoyu was found guilty of accepting over $850,000 (and maybe more than a million dollars) in bribes, and approving antibiotics and other drugs based not on clinical studies, but on cash gifts from Chinese pharmaceutical companies. His wife and son have also been charged, although I haven't seen anything on their sentences yet. Here's what Mr. Zheng looks like. Or "looked." He started out as a drug manufacturer himself, before rising into high bureaucratic position and overseeing drug manufacturers. He's ultimately responsible for that thing in 2004 in Anhui province when 13 babies died after being given nutrition-free fake milk powder instead of actual milk powder that had, like, nutrients in it.

He actually left the agency before the latest business with the melamine in the America dog food and the diethylene glycol in the Panamania cough syrup, and has never been officially linked with either of those, um, problems. Still, he makes a very high profile example that China cares about these things and will take dramatic steps to prevent them.

And now he is to be no more. Send in the vans, I suppose.

That's barring Zheng having his sentence lessened on appeal. (Or what passes for appeal - he might not ask for clemency, but the sentence automatically gets reviewed by a higher court and then the state supreme court. This isn't so different from America, except these are, quite obviously, not American courts.)


So.


Problem solved?

China has also announced its first system for issuing recalls of tainted products. It, uh, didn't have one before.

And they're instituting a blacklist for companies that sell tainted food. Which is, er, also a new thing.