Leftover food has become a "traffic password", but there is a mixture of fish and dragons, and supervision needs to be strengthened
Experts recommend the introduction of standards to strictly control quality and safety
□ Reporter Zhao Chenxi
"Never be prejudiced against 'leftovers'!" Zhang Yan, who lives in Wuluju, Haidian District, Beijing, sent a message on Moments after taking two photos of the three bags of food on the table from different angles with his mobile phone News about recommended snacks.
The three snacks he recommended are dried pork, beef jerky and walnut kernels. They all have one feature in common—they don’t look good.
"These are called leftover foods, which are those that have been crushed and smashed, and the appearance is not very good." Zhang Yan explained that the taste of these snacks is the same as that of genuine products, but the price is much cheaper. It is definitely "ugly and cheap." excellent product.
At present, leftover food is favored by more and more young people, and online shopping platforms have become the largest sales channel for leftover food.
However, there are problems such as uneven quality and shoddy food leftovers, and there are hidden dangers in food safety.
"Food leftovers can not only benefit consumers, but also reduce costs and increase efficiency for enterprises, but the premise of 'win-win' is that the products must meet food safety standards." Liu Junhai, a professor at the Law School of Renmin University of China, recently accepted an interview with a reporter from the "Rule of Law Daily" reporter At that time, it pointed out that where leftover food is illegal, it should consider the introduction of corresponding standards and regulations, and increase supervision to ensure the safety of consumers on the tip of their tongues.
Leftover food sales soar
Yang Zhe, a self-proclaimed "senior foodie", knew about leftover food a few years ago.
"At that time, a large bakery sold toast bread edges, which were uneven in appearance, but tasted good." Yang Zhe revealed that most of the initial leftover food came from bakeries and cake shops, and the store would process the remaining bread edges and cake edges. Waiting for ingredients to be sold in bags.
Due to the low price, the audience is mainly middle-aged and elderly consumers.
Nowadays, leftover food, which is becoming popular again, is more like "net celebrity food", and young people who pursue novelty have become the main buying group.
The reporter entered the keyword "leftover food" on an e-commerce platform, and searched for a large number of stores, including dried meat, beef jerky and other meat food leftovers, as well as chocolate wafer chips, seaweed chips, walnut kernels, etc. food.
"Business was mediocre in the first two years, and many consumers had a grudge against leftover food, thinking it was 'leftover' or bad, and they didn't dare to mention leftovers and other words when promoting products." A merchant who sells dried meat leftovers told reporters. He revealed that his main business is beef jerky processing. Since each batch of processing can leave some leftovers, in order to avoid waste, these jerky leftovers are re-seasoned and sold.
Leftover food has become very popular in the past year, and some customers even specifically asked whether the product belongs to leftover food, so merchants will push the concept of leftover food in their promotion.
A set of data is also enough to explain the popularity of scrap food.
According to the "White Paper on New Consumption Potential in the First Quarter of 2022" (hereinafter referred to as the "White Paper") released by the Mojing Market Intelligence Data Platform, in the first quarter of 2022, the sales of products related to snack leftovers on an e-commerce platform were 20.3 million yuan. A year-on-year increase of 1749.23%.
Product quality is uneven and problems occur frequently
"Don't doubt the strength of leftover food" "Small food is delicious and not expensive, so it doesn't hurt to stock up by the catty"... On a certain social platform, many posts tried their best to promote the advantages of leftover food to netizens.
Is leftover food really cheap?
Reporter investigation found that the status quo is not optimistic.
The reporter browsed the evaluations of many shops selling leftover food on an e-commerce platform and found that many consumers complained that the food was not worthy of the name, and there were even problems such as shoddy and selling "three noes" products.
Yang Zhe once bought a five-pack promotional package of leftover dried meat in an e-commerce store. After receiving the goods, he found that the packaging of the product was very simple. There was only dried pork printed on the plastic packaging bag, and there was no manufacturer or product information. And other specific identification, even key information such as production date and shelf life are just printed on a small white paper inside the bag.
Yang Zhe asked the merchant about this, and the merchant explained that the products are all processed and produced on the production line, but the packaging method is different, the quality is absolutely no problem, and the leftover food is not complete and authentic, so the original product packaging bag cannot be used for packaging.
"Unknown origin" is another major problem in the current leftover food.
Some consumers complained that the minced pork jerky they bought contained some "I don't know what kind of shredded pork".
The reporter found that this kind of "mixed products" is not accidental. Many consumers said that "unknown products" were found in leftover foods purchased, and some foods in the same package tasted very different in taste and taste. Food produced in batches and on the same production line.
According to Li Zhi, who has been in the food processing industry for many years, unless there are some large food processing factories, the output of leftovers is very limited.
"Food leftovers are fragmentary materials that appear during food production. Due to their shape and other reasons, they cannot be used in authentic products. Enterprises will control the production of leftovers for economic benefits. Even if they occur, most of them will be used as food raw materials and recycled for remanufacturing. "Li Zhi believes that the leftover food sold on a large scale in practice cannot be ruled out to be collected from various channels.
As leftover food has gradually become a "traffic password", many people ignore the price when buying. After "accounting", some consumers found that the price of some leftover food under the banner of high quality and low price is almost the same as that of genuine products, and some even exceed Genuine price.
The "White Paper" mentioned that the inability to guarantee product quality, doubtful cost performance, and the evolution into a marketing concept have become the pain points of the leftover food industry.
Some merchants use low-quality products, pet food and temporary food as snack scraps; some merchants mislead consumers through packaging methods, and the real price of products is even higher than formal products; some merchants only add scraps as a marketing concept to general merchandise. in the title.
Relevant standards and specifications are urgently needed
"Food leftovers are also food. Food operators must abide by the Food Safety Law and other relevant laws and regulations to ensure that products meet food safety standards." Chen Yinjiang, deputy secretary-general of the Consumer Rights Protection Law Research Institute of the China Law Society, pointed out that according to the provisions of the Food Safety Law , Food packaging should have food name, ingredient list, producer name, address, production date, shelf life, production license number and other information.
Although leftover food mostly adopts the "bulk mode", the law stipulates that the outer packaging of bulk food must also indicate the name of the food, the date of production, and the shelf life.
Liu Junhai added that the Law on the Protection of Consumer Rights and Interests clearly states that consumers have the right to know, so merchants cannot evade providing product information for any reason such as simple packaging, let alone sell "three noes" food.
In view of the fact that leftover food is mostly sold on the Internet, Chen Yinjiang reminded the e-commerce platform to increase the review.
The E-Commerce Law stipulates that platforms have qualification review obligations for merchants. In areas related to citizens' life, health and safety, such as food and medicine, platforms that fail to fulfill qualification review obligations and cause damage to consumers should bear corresponding responsibilities.
Therefore, while urging merchants to abide by the law, they should also strengthen the responsibility of e-commerce platforms, strictly review merchants, and actively intervene and assist in investigations in case of consumer complaints to protect consumer rights.
"At present, there is no corresponding product standard or management standard for leftover food in my country, which makes it in a 'grey' area." Liu Junhai believes that in view of the particularity of leftover food, relevant departments or industry associations can consider issuing corresponding standards and regulations. Standardize and avoid regulatory blind spots.
For example, Liu Junhai said that the processing, storage, packaging and sales modes of leftover food can be regulated.
For example, which food leftovers are suitable for sale and which ones are not; leftover food may contain multiple batches of products, how to reasonably determine the shelf life, etc.
At the same time, the supervision of leftover food should be strengthened. Relevant departments should conduct random inspections on the production and sales of key categories of food such as dried meat. E-commerce platforms should also collect consumer complaints and assist relevant departments to form a joint regulatory force.
Businesses with problems should adopt a "zero tolerance" attitude, strengthen crackdowns, increase illegal costs for unscrupulous businesses, and work together to strictly control the quality and safety of leftover food.
Comics/Li Xiaojun