Recently, Shanghai Yakult Dairy Co., Ltd., a related company of Yakult, was fined 450,000 Yuan because of promoting that “probiotics play an important role in the prevention and treatment of COVID-19”.

Shanghai Yakult Dairy Co., Ltd. promoted that “probiotics play an important role in the prevention and treatment of COVID-19” before the end of COVID-19 in China and cited Pneumonia Diagnosis and Treatment Plan Caused by Novel Coronavirus as a basis, which is easy to increase the attention and trust of consumers on its Yakult lactic acid bacteria products, mistakenly thinking that probiotics have a prevention and treatment effect on COVID-19; promoted that “the beneficial bacteria in intestine will be lost with the normal excretion of human body, so it is necessary to supplement active probiotics daily to keep the balance of intestinal flora”, which will make people mistakenly think that not taking probiotics daily will have a bad effect on body; promoted that “a small 100 ml bottle of Yakult contains more than 10 billion lactobacillus casei strain Shirota (LcS), one bottle per day can meet the probiotics that adults need for a day”, which will make people mistakenly think that if they drink a bottle of Yakult daily, lactic acid bacteria can meet the need of human body and ignore the supplement of other types of probiotics besides lactobacillus casei. The promotion behavior of Shanghai Yakult Dairy Co., Ltd. is conducive to increase the sales of Yakult lactic acid bacteria beverage, gain a competitive advantage and eliminate or hinder the competition of other types of probiotics beverage.

According to Article 20 Paragraph 1 of Law of the People’s Republic of China Against Unfair Competition, if operators violate Article 8 of this Law to make false and misleading commercial promotion on their products, or help other operators to make false and misleading commercial promotion by organizing false transaction, the supervision and inspection department shall order the operators to stop illegal behaviors and impose a fine of 200,000 Yuan to 1 million Yuan; if the behaviors are serious, a fine of 1 million Yuan to 2 million Yuan shall be imposed, and the business license may be revoked.

The behaviors of Shanghai Yakult Dairy Co., Ltd. violated Article 20 Paragraph 1 of Law of the People’s Republic of China Against Unfair Competition, Shanghai Pudong New Area Market Supervision Authority fined it 450,000 Yuan. The penalty date was August 31, 2021.

Source: China.com

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