Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) and DPP Taipei City Councilor Wang Wei-chung (王威中) yesterday urged the government to establish an inspection mechanism to protect consumers from counterfeit cosmetic and personal care products disguised as gray market goods.
The two told a news conference that many online shops are selling the so-called parallel imported cosmetic and personal care products, mainly from Japan and South Korea, but the government does not have a mechanism to monitor the quality of these products.
“They [the online shops] intentionally sell those products produced by foreign brands that have no official dealer in Taiwan, so they can do whatever they want,” Lin said. “There is no official dealer to protect the brand’s trademark in Taiwan or to verify the authenticity of the products.”
Photo: Peng Wan-hsin, Taipei Times
A Taipei resident purchased a beauty product claiming to be parallel imported, but became suspicious that it was counterfeit after using it, Wang said, adding that she subsequently reported the case to the Taipei Department of Health.
However, the department responded that it could only examine whether the product contained harmful substances, but could not determine whether it was an authentic brand product, he said.
Lin said they also received a report from a consumer who had bought aloe vera gel with packaging similar to that of a South Korean brand, but later questioned the quality of the product, as the authentic product sells for NT$79 per jar with a 25 percent discount, while two jars of the purchased product cost NT$99.
The Food and Drug Administration is only authorized to deal with products that make false health claims or have harmful substances, he said, while the task of determining whether a product is counterfeit is handled by the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Intellectual Property Office — but they cannot examine products’ ingredients.
Lin and Wang urged the government to establish a mechanism to protect consumers’ rights and safety.
Intellectual Property Office official Ho Tsan-cheng (何燦成) said at the news conference that the office can only determine if the trademark and labels are authentic, but it is not equipped to examine a product’s content.
He urged consumers to report suspicious products to the police for further investigation.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching