Low-cost brand milk powder is actually animal milk powder, why can it be listed on the shelves without a license? Shanghai prosecutors intervened to close the loophole

For only more than 40 yuan, you can buy a package of adult milk powder of the well-known brand "Deyun", which is more than 10 yuan cheaper than the official channel. However, the online store that sells is not a food store, but a clothing store. Why can such a "sheep's head selling dog meat" store exist in a dignified place on the e-commerce platform?

The reporter recently learned from the Third Branch of the Shanghai Municipal People's Procuratorate that the court found public interest litigation clues from a criminal case, and through supervision and performance of duties, the well-known e-commerce platform plugged a huge loophole and effectively protected the "safety on the tip of the tongue" of consumers.

Low-priced brand milk powder is actually animal milk powder

Zhan Mou was originally one of the agents of Deyun milk powder in China, and he found that the brand milk powder was very popular with domestic consumers, so he came up with the idea of counterfeiting Deyun milk powder for profit. Since January 2018, Zhan has gathered accomplices to set up a small workshop for filling fake milk powder in his rural hometown. At first, Zhan bought the lower-priced New Zealand milk powder from the Internet and put it into the bag of German milk powder for sale. Soon, Zhan felt that the profit was too low, so he changed the raw materials to temporary and expired milk powder purchased online. After the incident, the prosecutor clicked into Zhan's website to buy milk powder, and the home page impressively said "pigs, dogs, cattle and sheep and other animals eat milk powder."

The cost of such milk powder is almost negligible, so the external price is cheaper than that of formal channels. The low price attracted many buyers, and Zhan opened 15 stores on two domestic e-commerce platforms in one go, with cumulative sales of more than 4 million yuan in two years. Among them, from the "Double Eleven" in 2019 to the december 12 case, the sales reached 900,000 yuan in one month. After identification, the animal milk powder used by Zhan Mou as a raw material for milk powder did not meet the relevant national standards in terms of nutritional content.

At present, Zhan mou has been sentenced to 4 years in prison and fined 150,000 yuan by the court for the crime of counterfeiting a registered trademark.

In handling this trademark infringement case, the third branch court also found clues to the public interest litigation, and the public interest litigation prosecutor intervened at the same time. Further investigation found that of the 13 online stores opened by Zhan on a well-known e-commerce platform, only 2 provided food business licenses to the e-commerce platform. Some stores are registered as clothing stores, but they openly sell milk powder, and have not been investigated and punished by the platform in the past two years. Zhang Yan, procurator of the Fifth Procuratorate of the Third Branch, said.

The procuratorate recommends plugging loopholes in the system

Prosecutors then rushed to the headquarters of e-commerce platforms in other provinces and cities.

At first, the explanation given by the e-commerce platform was that Zhan claimed to be an overseas purchaser when registering an online store, and China's laws did not clearly stipulate whether the purchase was a sales contract or a service contract, so it did not require the purchaser to have a food business license. In addition, the platform has a perfect inspection mechanism, if there are violations in the sales process of the online store, the platform will promptly make removal, store closure and other treatment.

"This statement makes a lot of sense at first glance, but it can't help but be carefully scrutinized." Zhang Yan said that Zhan Mou is not a real purchasing agent, although he wrote on the online store introduction that he purchased from Hong Kong, but the delivery place of the express delivery has always been in the mainland. Prosecutors suspected that the e-commerce platform had loopholes in auditing whether stores were purchasing on behalf of the store, so they did an experiment.

Prosecutors first registered shops on the platform and downloaded photos of different kinds of food such as cake dumplings, prepackaged foods, and imported milk powder from the Internet to try whether they could list the goods. The results showed that when the prosecutor chose that the milk powder originated overseas, it passed the audit without providing other materials, and the goods could be sold on the shelves. Other food products that choose to be produced in China are required to provide food business licenses.

The prosecutor believes that this incident exposed a huge loophole in the review process of the e-commerce platform, that is, only the formal review of the information filled in by the store was carried out, and no substantive review was conducted. After compiling the entire registration process into information and sending it to the e-commerce platform, the platform also quickly admitted that there was indeed a problem with the platform in the review process.

In January this year, the Three Branches officially issued procuratorial recommendations to the platform, requiring strengthening the supervision of food business operators and establishing a warning and announcement system. In March, the e-commerce platform replied that it had required all food operators on the platform, including overseas purchasing agents, to provide relevant certificates, and more than 1,000 stores that could not be provided were found to remove related goods from the shelves. The platform has also strengthened the supervision of purchasing merchants, in addition to the merchant's self-report, it also conducts substantive review through post-audit of the place of shipment. In view of the situation that business operators are punished for violating laws and regulations, the platform specially sets up a special area for publicizing violations, and publicizes the names of illegal stores in real names.

Column Editor-in-Chief: Wang Haiyan Text Editor: Wang Xianle Caption Source: Visual China Photo Editor: Cao Liyuan

Source: Author: Wang Xianle