By ALEXA OLESEN

AP - BEIJING - China on Tuesday executed the former head of its food and drug watchdog who had become a symbol of the country’s wide-ranging problems on product safety.

Zheng Xiaoyu’s execution was confirmed by state television and the official Xinhua News Agency.

“The few corrupt officials of the (State Food and Drug Administration) are the shame of the whole system and their scandals have revealed some very serious problems,” SFDA spokeswoman Yan Jiangyang said at a news conference held to highlight efforts to improve China’s track record on food and drug safety.

Zheng was sentenced to death in May for taking bribes to approve an antibiotic blamed for at least 10 deaths and other substandard medicines.

Zheng’s death sentence was unusually heavy even for China, believed to carry out more court-ordered executions than all other nations combined, and likely indicates the leadership’s determination to confront the country’s dire product safety record.

jay: holy shit, dude. if i ran the FDA, i’d be psyched not to live in china. way to put on a show of force, china. now what are you gonna do about those people who look the other way when mines collapse and kill hundreds of workers at a time?

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