HOHHOT, Nov. 16 (Xinhua) -- Seven managers and workers from a bio-pharmaceuticals factory in north China and its parent company stood trial in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on Thursday, accused of producing and selling fake bird flu vaccines.
The defendants included Shen Hongjun, former assistant president of Jinyu Group, and Wang Jiafu, former legal representative of the Inner Mongolia Bio-Pharmaceuticals Factory.
The factory allegedly produced and sold 9,139 bottles of unapproved bird flu vaccines between 2004 and 2005, earning sales revenues of 4.46 million yuan (560,000 U.S. dollars), according to the prosecution.
Six different types of the vaccines were sold to provinces such as Liaoning, Gansu and Henan but chicken farm owners discovered that their chickens were still not immune to bird flu after the vaccines had been administered.
The Ministry of Agriculture revoked the factory's production permit for making animal vaccines in November last year. The seven suspects were detained the same month.
Wei Xuefeng, former technical director of the Biotechnology Division of Jinyu Group, Xu Mingwei, a former salesman in Beijing for the Inner Mongolia Bio-Pharmaceuticals Factory, and three former deputy managers of the factory's sales department in Beijing were also on the list of defendants at the Intermediate People's Court of Hohhot.
The case continues.