Since 2015, food companies have taken up legal weapons to "declare war" on food rumors. In 2017, under the joint control of the state administration of food and drug administration, the Ministry of Public Security and other ministries, online rumor makers such as plastic seaweed were also severely punished by law.
Two voices
Food rumors upset the industry
During the two sessions, minister of agriculture han changfu answered reporters' questions. Reporters from sierra leone raised the issue of "plastic rice". Mr Han said Chinese rice was safe and "plastic rice" was unheard of.
Deputy to the National People's Congress, director of the quality control testing center of yili group Li Cuizhi thinks that the popular science knowledge transfer relative lag, cause consumers to many new technologies, new products, new elements, new packaging such as lack of scientific understanding, lack of resolution to the error information and rumors, affect the sustainable development of the industry, has disturbed the normal market order. In this regard, she proposed to establish an authoritative platform for the popularization of food quality and safety knowledge and information disclosure, so as to realize centralized management and authoritative voice of knowledge popularization and information disclosure and enhance consumer confidence. At the same time, strengthen the new media information supervision, the establishment of false network information reporting processing mechanism.
Li cuizhi suggested strengthening legislation, intensifying law enforcement and severely punishing those organizations and individuals who maliciously create food rumors and slander food enterprises to seek illegitimate benefits.
Extended attention
Fifty food rumor makers were punished
Control food rumor, need to clarify in time not only, refute rumor, need legal means to restrain more.
This year on March 1, various media joint rumours platform release of the food and drug rumours analysis report in 2017, rumors of article 10 of the most popular food medicines and chemical reagents respectively plastic laver, plastic rice, drop of blood cancer, cotton, pork floss, eat a big chicken infection H7N9, without the "GB18186" code of soy sauce carcinogenic, melon and peach with food poisoning, persimmon and yogurt with food poisoning death, water spinach vegetable is the king of "poison", milk tea kill pure lead to male infertility, etc.
Since last year, regulators have stepped up joint inspections, sampling inspections and legal penalties in response to persistent food rumors.
Public security and Internet information authorities punished food rumor makers 50 times in 2017, including "plastic seaweed", "cotton floss" and "eating bayberry to catch a virus", said li haifeng, an inspector with the state food and drug administration.
In early 2017, the state food and drug administration specifically refuted the rumor about "the incident of plastic seaweed" and made it clear that it would severely crack down on it in accordance with relevant national laws and regulations. In June, public security authorities arrested five people, five rumor makers and eight rumor information disseminators for extorting money from the video by filming the "plastic seaweed" rumor. In November, the people's court of jinjiang city, fujian province, sentenced wang xiangxiang, the defendant in the "plastic seaweed" online rumor case, to one year in prison and 10 months, and fined 30,000 yuan.
In April 2017, mengniu filed a lawsuit against rumors that aflatoxin had been detected in its milk. In may, golden dragon fish company was once again spread rumors of "recycling gutter oil", the enterprise in refuting the rumor at the same time the alarm, rumors of criminal detention; In November, the people's court of mengyin county, shandong province, sentenced the defendant, wang xx, to one year in prison and a fine of 30,000 yuan for spreading rumors about peaches being used as preservatives.
As early as 2015, KFC, master kong, wahaha, nongfu spring and other food enterprises were affected by the rumors, and one after another, they sued the operating company behind the rumor of WeChat ID, and the total compensation amount was more than 61 million yuan.
Why are food rumors so common? China's food and drug administration has said that food rumors are often generated by misinterpreting experts' explanations or the content of certain programs, and that some rumors do not even specify when, where or who happened.
In addition to strengthening the fight against food rumors at the legal level, food companies themselves should actively deny rumors. In August 2017, the food safety office of the State Council and 10 other departments jointly issued the notice on strengthening the prevention, control and management of food safety rumors, which clearly requires the enterprises involved in rumors to be the first responsible body to refute rumors and fulfill the obligation to refute rumors.
