A Chinese billionaire beverage tycoon said Monday that besides severe punishment, strict management and unified standards are necessary in ensuring food safety in China.
Zong Qinghou, chairman of beverage giant the Wahaha Group and China's richest person according to the Hurun Global Rich List 2012, said severe punishment is "necessary", but measures should be taken to prevent food contamination at "the very beginning" by curbing agricultural pollution.
"With polluted water and soil, pesticide and herbicide-tainted farm produces, antibiotics abuse and illegal uses of feed additives, there will be no food safety," said Zong, a deputy to the National People's Congress, the country's top legislature.
Zong said the lack of unified food-safety standards has undermined China's food safety efforts, and too many governments or departments are setting different, or even conflicting standards in food production and circulation.
Zong called for the establishment of a national monitoring and early-warning system for food safety, and urged enterprises to enhance self-supervision.
Chinese procuratorates approved the arrests of 2,012 suspects for involvement in food-safety and fake drug cases and brought charges against 1,562 of them, according to a report from Supreme People's Procuratorate on Sunday.
Procuratorates conducted special campaigns last year to crack down on "gutter oil," or discarded cooking oil, and other crimes related to food and medicinal safety issues.
Chinese courts convicted 320 people in 278 cases related to producing and distributing toxic and harmful food and additives, said another report from the Supreme People's Court.