Recently, SAMR has issued some cases on illegal advertising, which aims to increase consumers’ legal awareness, and it also provides tips to food enterprises. Common violations in food advertisements including:

Tip 1: Advertising content does not match the information of the goods or services.

[Interpretation] The Article 28 of the Advertising Law points out that if the contents of an advertisement, which involve performance, function, origin, usage, quality, specification, composition, price, producer, shelf life, sales status, honors and other information about goods, or contents, provider, form, quality, price, sales status, honors and other information about services, and information related to the promise of goods or services, are inconsistent with the actual situation and have a substantial impact on the purchase behavior, the advertisement can be considered as false advertisement.

Tip 2: An advertisement uses such comparative words as “best”, “highest”.

[Interpretation] According to the Article 9 of the Advertising Law, an advertisement should be prohibited from using “national”, “highest”, “best”, or similar comparative words.

Tip 3: Health foods have claims of preventing and treating diseases.

[Interpretation] According to the Article 18 of the Advertising Law, an advertisement of health foods should not contain any assertions or assurances of efficacy or safety; the claims of prevention and treatment of diseases should not be involved.

Tip 4: Claim that non-medical products (e.g. foods) can treat disease.

[Interpretation] The Article 17 of the Advertising Law indicates that advertisements except those on medical services, drugs, and medical instruments should not involve disease treatment functions, nor use medical terms or terms that may result in confusion between the marketed goods and any drugs or medical instruments.

In addition to the above cases, there are other requirements for food advertisements. Antion will summarize relevant requirements based on product categories. Stay tuned!