Mayor wants State to share toxic capsule blame

A mayor complained that the central government should shoulder the responsibility for last year's toxic capsule scandal, Zhejiang-based news portal zjol.com.cn reported Saturday.

Qian Jianmin, deputy to the National People's Congress and mayor of Shaoxing, a city in East China's Zhejiang Province, said Saturday that the central government should shoulder the main responsibility for the toxic capsule scandal.

China Central Television reported on the toxic capsule scandal in April 2012 after discovering that some manufacturers in Zhejiang and Hebei provinces were using harmful industrial gelatin instead of edible gelatin to produce medicinal capsules.

After the companies involved in the scandal had been investigated and penalized, a total of 76 local officials were punished for failing to prevent and stop the production of contaminated drug capsules, the State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA), said in August last year.

But Qian said that local governments didn't receive notification of strict new standards implemented in October 2010, and that all drugs available in the domestic market are approved by the SFDA, so it should be responsible for the toxic capsules.

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