Crime and punishment

Capital punishment for two accused and different terms in prison for 19 have rung the curtain down on the first stage of the trial into the biggest ever food safety scandal in China. Thirty-nine other suspects are yet to be tried. But there is reason to believe that the trial and the punishment mark the beginning of a long-standing fight against contaminated food.

The offender who produced the melamine, the poisoned additive, was sentenced to death. And so was another offender who directly added the additive into raw milk before selling it to the manufacturer. Tian Wenhua, chairwoman of the board of directors of Sanlu Group, has been sentenced to life imprisonment.

With the victims - six kids dead and more than 290,000 left with various urinary tract ailments, including kidney stones - and 60 suspects arrested, the verdicts on the first group of offenders yesterday caught the attention of the entire country.