How are products massively counterfeited in retail chains?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

KP columnist Sergei Mardan recommends taking pity on your stomach and switching to the diet of a Tajik guest worker.

In one grocery chain, negotiations were under way with a sausage supplier to participate in a promotion.

- Will you be able to ship Doktorskaya to us at 399 rubles per kilogram?

- We can.

- And at 299? Can you?

- We can.

- A, for 199?

- You just tell me what price you need, and we will put so much meat in the sausage.

This is not a bike. This is a conversation that I personally was a participant in

In the struggle for diminishing margins, manufacturers and chains go to any marketing tricks. Reduce liter milk cartons to 900 ml. Buckwheat is hung up at 900 and even 800 grams.

But, these are all innocent pranks. After all, in promotions, everyone plays the same game. Buyers want the lowest possible price. And the manufacturer and the seller - in any case, must also earn.

It's another matter when a real counterfeit appears on store shelves.

I must say right away that stores don't really care about this. Despite the fact that all large chains have special departments that must thoroughly check manufacturers, go to production, take air measurements, check the cleanliness of the personnel locker rooms, all this, as usual in Russia, turns out to be a profanity.

Inspectors are hired for two kopecks, they don't give a damn about everything, inspectors fix flaws, write out instructions to eliminate them, and all this drags on for years.

The assortment of any hypermarket includes at least 30,000 items of food only, and there are also non-food items. The assortment is started and displayed every day, it changes the packaging, weight, tastes. This huge information routine makes it completely impossible to provide even minimal control.

As a result, even large retail chains cannot guarantee the absence of counterfeit products on the shelves.

Technically, the process of getting any product into the retail network looks like this.

The manufacturer sends to the commercial department samples of goods (of course, always fresh and of high quality) and a set of documents, among which there is a "certificate of conformity of quality", which confirms the quality of the goods and its composition. That is, if it is condensed milk, it will be written there - whole milk and sugar. Or, for example, "dairy and vegetable fats and sugars." And merchants must meticulously check the authenticity of the document, make an analysis of this condensed milk, or at least try it.

But that's not how it works

The purchasing department specialists look at dozens of samples of various products every day.

They usually don't even unpack them. Sausages, coffee, cheese and vegetable oil are carried home by petty clerks and office cleaners. Buyers are not poor people and they will not personally taste some unknown butter from the "ecologically clean foothills of the Caucasus". They are not their own enemies.

If the retail network is satisfied with the price, packaging design, and the amount of the advertising budget that the manufacturer is ready to spend on promoting the product, the product is “introduced” to the network, and we start buying it.

And here we must take into account several important nuances that turn our trip to the supermarket into a small lottery.

First. A certificate of conformity can be bought for 10-15 thousand rubles without any expertiseand even without providing physical samples of products.

This means that sausage, lemonade or sour cream does not pass the required biochemical examination.

I have personally come across cases when retail chains, including premium ones, supplied cheese, the amount of E. coli in which exceeded the norm by 15 times. Not fatal, but a person with a weak stomach can easily spend an evening in the toilet.

Don't believe me? Type in the search engine "Certificate of Conformity for Food". Dozens of companies providing these popular services will fall out to you.

Something else. Even if the certificate is obtained in compliance with all standards, this does not mean at all that the manufacturer guarantees stable quality and sanitary standards in each batch of goods. The certificate is issued once a year, and perishable goods are loaded into stores 3-4 times a week straight from production.

Manufacturers, in the struggle to reduce costs, buy the cheapest raw materials. Low fat milk, which is achieved by palm oil. Soy and pork skins to make sausage filler.

Even if the sausage is labeled “Does not contain soy”, it means that instead of soy there are offal and fats. It is easily determined by price (low), and taste (not meat).

The biggest source of consumer risk is small production. This is almost always the consumer's worst choice.

Small industries usually balance on the brink of survival, save on everything, including raw materials, equipment and quality. They are often created by enthusiastic entrepreneurs who are actually training for you and me.

It is safer to buy food from large corporations. Better transnational. Although this is not patriotic.

What distinguishes McDonald's from Golyanovo shawarma?

At McDonald's, you are almost guaranteed not to be poisoned. The control system of a huge corporation for 80 years has been built in such a way as to protect shareholders' money from any idiot employee, no matter where he is - from Russia, China or Brazil.

There is no need to worry that Auchan or Magnet will sell you fake Nescafe coffee or Danone yogurt. Chains enter into contracts with foreign brands directly. There are no intermediaries there, so your instant coffee will actually be produced in Poland or Hungary, and not in Vladikavkaz.

Brands are not counterfeited. The products themselves are falsified. They have been doing it massively and for a long time.

In fact, you have long been accustomed to this and do not even notice that you have removed something wrong. If only because most people with quality products do not meet at all or are extremely rare in their lives.

There is nothing wrong with falsifications, in my opinion, no. When buying ham at a super price, you just have to understand that the 40% discount you received from the supposedly regular price is 40% of salted water, which is used to douche the meat. Manufacturers and retailers call such a product "pumped up".

This is usually done with ham, carbonate, smoked ham. There will also be water in the ham for 1,500 rubles. This corresponds to GOST and gives the ham additional softness. Without it, "Tambovskiy gammon" will be too dense and you will not like it. And of course, you don't have to drink a ham for 600. There is already plenty of water in it.

They also douche a chicken. So that it costs 90 rubles per kilogram. This is not dangerous. It's just that salt water will come out of the carcass during cooking, and as a result, chicken will still cost you 140 rubles. But good emotions, the joy of saving money is also worth money, isn't it? So don't be sorry.