Make money by selling adulterated food? Why not, it's only a misdemeanor!

[pnwmom]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&sid=aNMrktBxccGw&refer=asia


U.S., Chinese Companies Charged Over Tainted Pet Food (Update1)
By Robert Schmidt

Feb. 6 (Bloomberg) -- A U.S. company, ChemNutra Inc., and two Chinese businesses were charged by a federal grand jury with manufacturing and importing tainted ingredients used in pet food that may have killed thousands of cats and dogs last year.

Top executives from the companies were also indicted. The U.S. accused them of importing 800 metric tons of wheat gluten poisoned with melamine, an unsafe food additive. The shipments were mislabeled to avoid inspection in China, prosecutors said.

``In today's global economy, crimes that occur halfway around the world can seriously impact our lives,'' U.S. Attorney John Wood of Kansas City, Missouri, said today in a statement. ``Millions of pet owners remember the anxiety of last year's pet food recall.''

SNIP

Las Vegas-based ChemNutra and its owners, Sally Miller and Stephen Miller, were charged with 26 misdemeanor counts alleging they delivered adulterated food and introduced it into interstate commerce. The executives and the company were also charged with one felony count of participating in a wire-fraud conspiracy to defraud companies that purchased the contaminated gluten.

SNIP

[kestrel91316]

1. Them's the facts, ma'am. You don't like the way the law's written,

work to change it. We don't lynch people anymore just because we're morally outraged.

Don't get me wrong, I think being force-fed melamine-tainted food is the ideal punishment for them. But I'm not gonna start up outraged threads over it because I know the law is the law.

And there's a felony count in there, I note.

[pnwmom]

2. Yeah, but the felony count is a catch-all count unrelated to the

purposeful adulteration.

I don't think people should be lynched, but a 3 month prison term sounds pretty inadequate for putting poison in food on purpose.