Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Trial Date Set for the CEB Rice Case

The CEB Rice case, in which Fang Zhouzi had been accused for defamation, will be tried in the West District People's Court in Beijing on June 30. The trial will be open to public and available with stream video on the Internet. It's not clear if the practice of streaming video of court cases is a common practice in China or not.

The latest issue of the China News Weekly summarized the case in a detailed report, which is very favorable to Fang Zhouzi. Fang Zhouzi insisted that his accusation of fraud was about the company's product, not its technology as the lawsuit had claimed. The story also quoted several other scientists who questioned the claims of the CEB Rice company.

Particularly damning to CEB Rice is an interview with a businessman by the name of Zhang Jiang. Zhang Jiang had worked with the founders of CEB Rice, the parents of the current plaintiff. According to Zhang Jiang, their original attempts in creating a super-nutrious rice had failed miserably. After they gave up their experiment, the other two partners founded CEB Rice without Zhang Jiang's knowledge. An angry Zhang Jiang provided evidence to the paper of fraudulous behavior commited by CEB Rice, including selling rice that was contaminated.

CEB Rice did not respond to the reporter's requests for an interview.

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