Taiwan's High Court has sentenced the head of the country's second-biggest egg supplier to 2 years 8 months in prison for mixing bad eggs into products sold at major supermarkets — bad news for the company, and a warning shot for food suppliers.

• Li Chun-ming, who ran Chang Chi Tai An and Tai Ding Shan, took back expired, returned and near-expiry eggs from retailers and mixed them into fresh boxed eggs.
• The repackaged boxes carried fake production dates and went to PX Mart and RT-Mart, and from there to ordinary shoppers.
• Rotten, wormy, cracked and broken eggs were turned into liquid egg products and sold to food makers and Carrefour to cut losses.
• The scheme ran for about six years, and the court treated it as aggravated fraud rather than a simple food safety breach.
• Both companies have since been dissolved, but their fines of NT$26 million and NT$41 million in seized profits are already final.

Outlook: The sentence can still be appealed, so the case is likely to drag on even as the fines against the two companies stand.