COMMITMENT: Around 100,000 people in Shijiazhuang, capital of Hebei Province, signed their names to a promise to make Shijiazhuang a city with safe food, on December 6, 2008

At 8 a.m. on December 31, 2008, a trial began in the Intermediate People's Court of Shijiazhuang, capital of Hebei Province. The courtroom was packed with 360 people and the trial lasted for more than 14 hours, ending at 10:10 p.m. Four executives of the Sanlu Group, the major dairy at the center of China's tainted milk scandal, went on trial.

Sanlu Group's former General Manager and Board Chairwoman Tian Wenhua, former deputy general managers Wang Yuliang and Hang Zhiqi, and former executive in charge of the milk procurement division Wu Jusheng, all arrested on September 26, 2008, pleaded guilty to producing and selling fake or sub-standard products.

Wang entered the court in a wheelchair because he had "injured his legs." He suffered the injuries during an attempt to commit suicide because he felt sorry for the suffering children and their families.

According to the indictment, Sanlu first received complaints from parents in late 2007, saying their children's urine was discolored. When the number of complaints swelled in March 2008, the company set up a working team to handle the case, Tian, who led that team, told the court.

By May, it had found that the products were contaminated with a non-food chemical rich in nitrogen, but it did not know the exact nature of the chemical. The company found the chemical was melamine, a toxic industrial chemical used to make plastics and tan leather, after Tian ordered a thorough probe in late July.

Sanlu Group submitted a written report about the problematic milk powder to the Shijiazhuang City Government on August 2, 2008, Tian said. The company then sent samples from 16 batches of its products to the quality inspection and quarantine bureau of the province to test for melamine. It did not, however, specify that the samples were from its products. The results, issued on August 1, showed 15 of the samples contained high levels of melamine.