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    Half Tones

    Five Jailed for Selling Cadmium-Contaminated Rice in Hunan

    May 09, 2020

    A court in central China’s Hunan province has sentenced five people to jail for illegally producing or selling cadmium-contaminated rice for human consumption, financial news outlet Caixin reported Friday. The sentences, which range from 18 months to two years, were handed down in mid-April.

    According to the ruling by a district court in Yiyang, the convicted had auctioned off 21,276 tons of rice with excessive cadmium levels to be used as animal feed. However, more than 785 tons of the rice was illegally sold to a mill to be processed for human consumption, and 83 tons were later sold to two food processing plants in Hunan and the southern Guangdong province.

    In recent years, Hunan — one of China’s top rice-producing provinces — has seen several cases of cadmium contamination, threatening both humans and the environment. In 2017, another food company in Yiyang sold around 10,000 tons of toxic rice, resulting in jail sentences for 16 people. (Image: People Visual)