Heavily fined for illegally adding colorants to tea

Our reporter Yuan Guofeng

The reporter learned from the Higher People's Court of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region that a man in Yining City, Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture, added coloring agents such as lemon yellow and sunset yellow to tea for profiteering, and the sales amounted to more than 24 million yuan

On December 30, 2021, the Yili Prefecture Branch of the Xinjiang High Court made a first-instance judgment on the first case of adding colorants to tea products in Xinjiang, and the defendant appealed

The court held that the defendant Hai Mou added tartrazine and sunset yellow to his tea products for sale in violation of the provisions of GB2760-2014 "National Food Safety Standard for the Use of Food Additives", and his behavior constituted production.

Why does Haimou's behavior constitute the production and sale of fake and shoddy products, rather than the crime of producing or selling poisonous or harmful food or the crime of producing and selling food that does not meet safety standards? The judge in this case held that, according to the "Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China", the production or sale of food mixed with toxic or harmful non-food raw materials, or the sale of food knowingly mixed with toxic or harmful non-food raw materials, constitutes production , The crime of selling toxic and harmful food, the determination of this crime is mainly aimed at the production and sale of food that contains toxic and harmful non-food raw materials, that is, the toxicity of food material components

"China Food News" (03 edition on March 29, 2022)

(Editor-in-charge: Yuan Guofeng)