The ugliness of a market full of counterfeit products

Mar 26, 2017 AFC Column, Features / Columnists

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Once again the spectre of questionable imports entering Guyana’s market is raising its ugly head. Just last week the Government Analyst-Food and Drug Department (GA-FDD) announced that it refused entry of an unsatisfactory shipment of foodstuff after testing samples, as it does, on all/most shipments of imported foods.
Last January the GA-FDD also stopped a shipment of flavoured milk originating in the Middle East. The product was found to be adulterated with palm oil which is expressly prohibited by the Laws of Guyana Food and Drug Act Chapter 34:04 Part II, Section 7 on food standard. This standard has been rigorously applied by the Department, not least because milk and milk products are generally consumed by children and toddlers.
Over the past 16 months approximately, this Department has denied entry of several shipments of other milk-based products and two importers of condensed milk had moved to the courts to challenge the decision but they lost. The GA-FDD Head, Marlan Cole, promised that his Department will continue to ensure that substandard goods, including counterfeits, are not released into our local market.
The AFC’s responses to these recent occurrences were: “Not again! The risks to our nation’s health are too great.” We also recall vividly the strenuous fight fought by the private sector in 2013/4 to get the then government to get up and do something about the flood of counterfeit products that were appearing on supermarket on grocery shop shelves alongside or instead of their locally manufactured items. Even equipment that our authorized distributors were importing was not exempt from the ongoing counterfeiting scams. Of course, this dramatic situation had an adverse effect on:-
* The commercial sector (wholesale and retail stores included)
* The manufacturing sector including the producers of processed foods, furniture, tools, construction materials, kitchen and other household items and equipment
* Services providers including fashion designers and craft producers
* The tug and ferry owners who ship stone and wood from quarries and forests.
In short, the livelihoods of these Guyanese entrepreneurs were put at serious risk. The biggest losers, though, were the average citizens who, after being gulled by cheaper prices, were subjected to bodily injuries from brush cutters, chain saws and other equipment they purchased right here.
The nation began to learn about the pervasiveness of counterfeiting when Ansa McAl called in the media in 2014 to demonstrate how several products manufactured by the renowned Proctor and Gamble, for example, had been counterfeited and were being sold in the local marketplace. These products included Head and Shoulders, Pantene Pro V, the Olay Total Effects product line and others for which they are the Authorized Distributors.
Then head of Ansa McAl, Beverley Harper, had this to say: “It (prevalence of counterfeited products) is unscrupulous to the extent that they are actually defrauding the consumer”. She noted that her company had recorded a 25% drop in sales for the Head and Shoulders line, and a 30% drop in the sale of Heineken beer, which was also being counterfeited.
It was, sometimes still is, very difficult to identify the fake products, unless a buyer looks very closely. The differences are there, e.g. the placement of expiry dates, the colour and texture of counterfeited cosmetics, the stitching of high-end shoes or flour bags.
Representatives of some of those world-renowned manufacturers had already been flying into Guyana since 2012 to investigate the counterfeit complaints. They carried out their own visual and laboratory tests and some ‘soft-shoe investigations’ and then they instituted court proceedings against the local culprits whom they were able to ferret out. We (AFC) were told about technicians going into certain warehouses and witnessing the actual exchange of unknown brand plates on newly-arrived equipment with the reputable Stihl brand plates.
Investigators also found a food distribution centre in the Ruimveldt area that was dealing in fake Del Monte (and other) canned foods. The cans leaving the so-called distributor’s warehouse carried Del Monte labels that the naked eye could not identify as fake. Their contents, though, without exception, failed every test for wholesome preserved food. This Ruimveldt operator was also taken to court.
As if that were not enough, the counterfeiters began to target a few Guyanese staples that we are particularly proud of – Golden Cream Margarine and Thunderbolt flour. Both Sterling Products Limited and NAMILCO discovered the counterfeits on their own and instituted their own measures to stop the distribution of the fakes.
NAMILCO was first alerted by complaints from bakers that their flour-based products were “discoloured and heavy”. The company investigated and found some visual differences, e.g. the flour was grey not white, and the counterfeiter’s bags weighed 39kg instead of 45kg.
So, what if they had waited for the PPP government to make a move, to do something to stop the importation of horribly inferior clothing and fabrics; cosmetics that damaged ladies’ and men’s faces and hair; pharmaceuticals that were just plaster, syrup and sugar; brush cutters with moving parts made with plastic instead of metal?
If they had, they would have been thoroughly undersold by now, outfoxed by imported inferior and useless counterfeits. They would have been out of business, were it not for the strong resolve the companies had to stand and fight.
The AFC has been in full support of the proactive stance taken by the Ministry of Public Health, the GA-FDD, the GNBS and GRA to find and destroy counterfeit products, police the ports and protect our citizens’ health.

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