假蜂蜜、假驼奶、减肥糖和“幽灵外卖”：最高法公布网络食品安全犯罪典型案例

These days, lots of people are used to buying food online, and ordering on impulse while watching a livestream is common too.

But the honey you buy might be made of sugar water, and the diet sweets you buy might contain drugs.

Recently, China's Supreme People's Court and Supreme People's Procuratorate published several typical cases of online food crime.

The first case is about fake honey.

In 2023, someone surnamed Huang in Changge, Henan province, mixed fake honey from syrup, glucose powder and flavourings in a workshop at home.

This person stuck foreign-language labels on the bottles, marked with "country of origin" and "importer," pretending it was imported linden honey.

The fake honey sold very cheaply online, only about six yuan a jin, with the promise "buy one bottle, get five."

This person also used other people's identity details to open several shops on different e-commerce platforms.

Helped by the platforms' recommendations, the fake honey sold twelve hundred orders a day, more than two million yuan in total.

One of the fake honey products sold more than 34,000 orders in just two months.

Tests found no honey protein in it at all.

The court sentenced this person to fifteen years in prison and a fine of 1.2 million yuan.

The court said platforms recommend cheap, good-value products to help consumers, but that is also easily exploited by bad actors.

The second case is about fake camel milk powder.

Three people bought cheap, low-quality milk powder online, repackaged it in a rented flat and stuck on fake foreign brand labels.

They opened three shops on an e-commerce platform, paid for traffic, and claimed the powder boosted immunity and lowered blood sugar.

They deliberately sold the powder to older people and students, four hundred thousand yuan's worth in total.

Tests found that the calcium, fat and protein in the powder all failed national standards.

The three were sentenced to three years and two years ten months respectively.

The third case is about toxic diet sweets.

Someone opened a shop on a livestreaming platform and hired a host to sell so-called diet tablet sweets on livestreams.

Some consumers felt dizzy and weak after eating them.

The host said it was because they were taking them the wrong way, or because everyone's body is different.

Later tests found the sweets contained a drug called buthiazide, a diuretic that should never be in food.

The host was also good at dodging the platform's checks, never saying "lose weight" on the livestreams, only "get prettier" and "slim figure."

In the end, the two were sentenced to one year and nine months respectively.

Another case took place in Inner Mongolia, and involved diet coffee.

A shopkeeper surnamed Zhang, with no food business licence and without checking the supplier's quality certificates, bought stock online, sold it on social media and recruited downstream sales agents.

Some customers had palpitations, nausea and sweating after drinking it, and someone sent it for testing on their own and found sibutramine in the coffee.

Sibutramine raises the risk of serious heart problems, and the country banned adding it to food long ago.

But even after learning this, the seller kept selling, and was eventually sentenced to two years ten months.

The court said private chats, haggling and transfers on social media are more hidden than open e-commerce platforms, and harder to regulate.

The fourth case involves "ghost takeout."

"Ghost takeout" means shops you can find on food-delivery platforms that have no real address or legitimate licences.

Someone surnamed Luo used photo-editing software to make more than 3,900 fake business licences and food business permits.

Each sold for fifty to three hundred yuan, to many places across the country, earning more than 360,000 yuan.

Some people bought these fake certificates, registered shops on delivery platforms and sold them on for others to run.

This person was sentenced to six years.

The court said that with food sold online, problems spread faster and wider than offline, and the harm is greater.

Next time you buy food online, how will you judge whether it's safe?