She was reported for selling too much boric acid in the stuffed skin

"In a case of producing and selling toxic and harmful food, the defendant ended up paying several times the price of punitive damages. From the perspective of protecting the public interest, our procuratorial organs have always had a zero-tolerance attitude towards cases of infringement of consumer rights and interests. Speaking of the first food safety public interest litigation case in Qinghai Province that filed a request for punitive damages and was supported by a court judgment, the procurator of the Guide County Procuratorate in Qinghai Province, who undertook the case, still has a lot of feelings.

In March 2018, after being reported, Ma Mou's brewed skin (a local snack) on sale was reported to be too high boric acid. The staff of the Food and Drug Administration of Hainan Prefecture in Qinghai Province took a sample test and determined that the boric acid content did not meet the standard. If too much boron is consumed for a long time, it will cause poisoning of multiple organs in the human body. On April 16 of the same year, the Guide County Food and Drug Administration, together with the County Public Security Bureau, inspected Ma's brewing skin processing shop and sales stalls. After investigation, Ma sold borax-added brewing skins to unspecified people, with a total sales volume of more than 13,000 yuan.

On November 16, 2018, the Guide County Procuratorate filed a public prosecution with the court on suspicion of producing and selling toxic and harmful food. On January 10, 2019, the court filed a criminal attached civil public interest lawsuit, requesting that Ma be ordered to apologize to the public in the county-level public media and pay several times the compensation for the sale price of the brewed skin. The court rendered a judgment supporting all of the procuratorate's claims.

"How to determine the calculation base of punitive damages is a problem, because the consumers infringed in public interest litigation are not specific, and the results of physical damage caused by toxic and harmful foods are slower, and it is difficult to calculate losses, we exploratorily propose to calculate punitive damages based on daily sales." The prosecutor handling the case told reporters.

The pace of protecting the rights and interests of consumers has been moving forward. On November 12 this year, the Qinghai Provincial Procuratorate's Consumer Civil Public Interest Litigation Procuratorate Office was established in the Provincial Consumers Association, which is a useful attempt by the procuratorate and the Consumer Association to jointly promote the innovation of consumer rights protection concepts and methods.

It is reported that the Consumer Civil Public Interest Litigation Procuratorate Office is mainly responsible for regular exchanges and communication with consumer associations in the field of consumer civil public interest litigation, coordinating and doing a good job in investigation and evidence collection, intellectual support and other work, supporting the prosecution of civil public interest litigation cases involving food and drug consumption and service consumption initiated by consumer associations, and actively exploring punitive damages litigation requests in civil public interest litigation on food and drug safety. (Procuratorial Daily, Li Wei, Wang Likun)

Source: Supreme People's Procuratorate