China has had a long history of tainted food and products that have led to numerous deaths. In 2007, one man was executed for them. Zheng Xiaoyu was the former head of China's State Food and Drug Administration. Xiaoyu had been accepting bribes ($850,000 worth) from firms that allowed them to register their products while bypassing food safety regulations. Those bribes were linked to medicines that were poorly produced and were blamed for several deaths. So the Chinese government took harsh action. But still, not much seems to have changed. Food safety in China is still widely viewed as sub-standard by much of the world.