Food law for thought

The Eighth Amendment to the Criminal Law, approved Friday after three reviews by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, deserves everyone's attention because it involves one of our foremost problems: food safety.

The unsettling mixture of truth and falsity about the seriously contaminated food chain, mostly by unscrupulous businesspeople, has brewed among us very high expectations for the Criminal Law to provide more effective deterrence. The latest amendment represents a legislative response to those anticipations.

According to Article 144 of the current law, the minimum punishment for people who add non-food, toxic or harmful materials to food products or knowingly sell such food products is imprisonment for up to five years, or criminal detention, and a fine. The Eighth Amendment has removed criminal detention from the provision, meaning anyone convicted of such a crime, irrespective of the circumstances, will be imprisoned.