Recently, General Mills Trading (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., a related company of Haagen-Dazs (hereinafter referred to as "General Mills"), had a new administrative penalty.

General Mills provided product pre-sale service of "2020 Mid-Autumn Festival Haagen-Dazs orange heart Mid-Autumn mooncake ice cream gift voucher reservation delivery" and published the order website page advertisement on Tmall online shop "Haagen-Dazs Flagship Store". The pre-sale gift vouchers in advertisement include "oolong tea white peach mooncake shape ice cream", "jasmine strawberry mooncake shape ice cream” and “matcha mooncake shape ice cream". The outer skin ingredients of three products were expressed as "oolong tea chocolate outer skin", "jasmine green tea chocolate outer skin" and "matcha chocolate outer skin". However, the ingredients list, raw materials and raw materials inspection reports of the products show that the outer skins of the above-mentioned products are made of white cocoa butter alternatives chocolate crispy skin, so the product outer skins should be cocoa butter alternatives chocolate outer skin instead of chocolate outer skin declared on its website.

Therefore, Shanghai Pudong New Area Market Supervision Authority ordered General Mills to stop publishing illegal advertisements and fined 10,000 Yuan.

In China, chocolate is definitely defined as "solid or semisolid foods at room temperature that using cocoa products (cocoa butter, cocoa mass or cocoa liquor/ chocolate liquor, cocoa cake, cocoa powder) and/or white granulated sugar as the main ingredient, obtained by specific techniques after added or not added dairy products, food additive in currently implemented National Food Safety Standard Chocolate, Cocoa Butter Alternatives Chocolate and Their Products. Among them, the content of cocoa butter alternatives shall not exceed 5% (calculated as the original ingredients), otherwise the product should be named as cocoa butter alternatives chocolate.

The Advertising Law stipulates that for the performance, function, place of origin, application, quality, composition, price, manufacturer, expiration date and promise of commodity in advertisement or the content, provider, form, quality, price, promise of service, if there are expressions about the above contents, they should be accurate, clear and understandable. Violators will be ordered by the market supervision department to stop advertising, and the advertiser will be fined less than 100,000 Yuan.

The Pudong New Area Market Supervision Authority believed that the behavior of Haagen-Dazs violated the Advertising Law and constituted an illegal act of inaccurately expressing ingredients of commodity in advertisement. In view of the fact that the illegal act of Haagen-Dazs lasted less than 6 months and did not cause damage to human health and body or property, the supervision department gave a lighter penalty, ordered Haagen-Dazs to stop publishing illegal advertisements and fined 10,000 Yuan.

Source: Shanghai Observer

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