Chinese kindergarten owner given life sentence over lead paint poisoning scandal

The owner of a Chinese kindergarten has been jailed for life after more than 200 children were poisoned by lead in the country’s worst food safety scandal for almost two decades.

A total of six people were jailed on Friday for making or selling harmful foodstuffs by Lanzhou Intermediate People’s Court in Gansu province.

Li Huifang, owner of the Peixin Kindergarten in Tianshui, was handed a life sentence and fined 500,000 yuan (US$75,000), while Zhu Jinglin, the principal, was jailed for 15 years and fined 300,000 yuan.

Four canteen staff – Niu Aiyuan, Wen Yafang, He Xuxia and An Chunling – were jailed for between six and eight years and given fines.

The scandal emerged in July last year, when more than 200 children were found to be suffering from lead poisoning.

Police said at that time that canteen staff bought decorative paint online with the consent of Zhu and Li, diluted it and added it to food.

Laboratory tests confirmed that the paint – which had been clearly marked as not safe for consumption – contained lead.

Of the 251 children at Peixin Kindergarten, 233 were found to have abnormal blood lead levels while 18 returned tests within the normal range.

Food samples from the kindergarten were found to contain more than 2,000 times the national safe limit for contaminants.

The case, one of the worst food safety scandals involving children for several years, sparked nationwide fury.

Some drew comparisons with the 2008 case, when some 300,000 children were poisoned after suppliers added melamine, a chemical used to make plastic, to powdered milk to artificially boost the protein levels.

People’s Daily, the Communist Party mouthpiece, said on Saturday that the latest scandal had “dealt a severe blow to food safety standards”, but there would be “zero tolerance” for any act that harmed public health.

It said the authorities should not overlook any cases of this kind and “deal a heavy blow” to all those responsible for safety breaches.

“Only by making the cost of crime prohibitively high can we deter misconduct and compel businesses to respect the rules and hold the bottom line,” the article said.

Earlier this week, the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, the top Communist Party body overseeing national security and intelligence, said illegal acts that endangered food safety should be “severely punished”.

It also called for a focus on areas of public concern such as the food served in schools as well as fruit and vegetables.