Severer penalties can deter food offenders

A Chinese customer buys pork at a free market in Yichang city, central China's Hubei province, 19 November 2014. [Photo/IC]

The uncovering of a big network involving 11 groups suspected of selling contaminated pork in 11 provinces and autonomous regions is a great job by the police in these localities. Yet people will hardly feel optimistic about food safety once they consider how such pork could easily pass through all the defense lines that should have prevented it from entering the market and ending up on the dining tables of many.

Insurance agents who pay pig farms for the loss of their animals due to disease know that it is not only unethical but also a crime to provide information about dead pigs to those who profiteer from the pork of such pigs. But they did it simply because they were paid.

The pig farmers should also have known that pigs that died from disease should be disposed of in a safe manner without letting them get in people's harm's way. But they sold them even though insurance companies have already paid them for the loss they suffered. They too did it for money.

Instead of stopping such unfit pork from entering the market, some meat quarantine officers gave these groups unfit quarantine certificates, providing the green light for such contaminated pork to be sold in the same market as uncontaminated pork. Again they did it for money.

Professional ethics, a sense of justice, the basic moral standards for being a decent person, all the things that should have played a role in preventing these people from selling their souls to the devil went out of window.

Behind the triumph of the police is a sad story of the depravity of human nature in the face of the greed for money.

This was enabled by the lack of deterrents. Prohibitively high fines and the most severe criminal penalties are needed, and must be enforced, to deter others from giving in to their baser instincts in this way.

Not only should those who are involved in the process of buying, butchering and sale of such contaminated pork receive the most severe penalties according to the law, so should the insurance agents and quarantine officers. If the price they have paid in fines and criminal punishments fail to outweigh the economic benefits they've gained, it is quite likely that they will pick up the business again after they are released from prison. It is also likely that others will follow their example.