If you are buying food from supermarkets or groceries (Jingkelong, Carrefour, Wumart, Merry Mart, Jenny Lou, April Gourmet…), you’ve probably noticed that cashiers are stamping red characters on the receipt… If you can’t read Chinese, you have probably no idea of the meaning of the disclaimer carefully stamped on each receipt.
Supermarkets are not targeting at average consumer but at people with bad intention or “professional shoppers”, who bring foods to the counter and complain about having purchased expired goods. Those professional shoppers have been caught by supermarket staff hiding goods in another department to come back and complain after the expiration date.
In China, the Food Safety Law protects the consumer who purchased expired food to receive a compensation of 10 times the price of the product (with a minimum amount of 1000 RMB).
However, the stamp has no legal value, according to the China Consumer Association. Meanwhile, the Beijing Food and Drug Administration said that the stamp can only be considered a kind of warning for the customer.
As a conclusion, pay attention to the expiration date of the goods you purchase in the supermarket, as you could have harder time to get reimbursed in case you would get an expired product, even the stamping has no legal value!
Sources:
http://paper.chinaso.com/detail/20160221/1000200032869621456011580231694230_1.html
http://www.chinanews.com/cj/2015/10-04/7554684.shtml
http://www.cnfoodnet.com/article/read/id/8638
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