Tampering with food product labels to be punished by law

The Supreme People's Court said on Wednesday that those who are found to be tampering with labels of food products will be brought before the law.

The top court issued an interpretational document on the application of law in trials involving punitive damages disputes related to food and drug cases. It will take effect on Thursday. It specifies that failure to label, deliberate mislabeling and significant mislabeling do not qualify as mere flaws in labeling or instructions.

Wu Jingli, the deputy chief judge of the First Civil Division of the Supreme People's Court, said that the regulations on deliberate mislabeling are primarily aimed at curbing the production and sale of counterfeit and substandard food products.

Wu emphasized that deliberate mislabeling of the required content on food labels and instructions reflects a significant level of subjective fault, warranting accountability.

According to China's Food Safety Law, if there are flaws in the labeling or instructions of food products, producers or operators are generally not liable for punitive damages.

The interpretation stipulates that for flaws in labels or instructions to be considered as such, they must meet two conditions simultaneously: they must not affect food safety and must not mislead consumers.

The deliberately mislabeled content typically involves information that has a major impact on consumers' health or their ability to assert their rights, such as the name of the producer, address, ingredients or composition, production date and shelf life. The intention behind such mislabeling is to mislead consumers. Therefore, those responsible should be held liable for punitive damages, Wu said.

The document also addresses how to handle claims involving consecutive purchases of food products that do not meet safety standards, purchases by professional agents engaged in procuring food and drugs that fail to meet safety standards, as well as cases where buyers intentionally create false impressions of producers or operators engaging in illegal production and operations to make fraudulent claims.