E-Commerce A Platform For Food Fraud, Agree or Disagree

Advancement of e-commerce is a platform for food fraud.
Agree/Disagree?
Ladies and gentlemen, fraud and deceit have been there
since the beginning of history, where for instance people have
been conned into thinking brass is gold, glass is sold as
diamonds; and poison has been hawked as excellent food. Now,
food fraud refers to the act of purposely altering &
misrepresenting or tampering of any food product. It can occur in
raw materials, ingredients, as well as food packaging. Now with
the current Covid-19 pandemic, people are too afraid to leave
their homes to purchase food products from restaurants in fear of
contracting the virus and spreading to their loved ones at home.
Thus, they find it convenient to purchase food products via
eCcommerce platforms like GrabFood or purchase groceries from
GrabMart. Statistics shown that COVID-19 boosts online sales as
global e-commerce jumped to $26.7 trillion. This shows that
eCommerce platforms are widely used during this pandemic.
However, with this boost of online sales, there is also an
increasing risk of food fraud being transacted over the internet as
some have misused it for their own selfish gain. An e-commerce
platform allows online businesses to be conducted i.e., buying
and selling via websites, online apps like Shopee or Lazada. It
was initially a genuine idea to connect sellers & buyers in pursuit
of their objectives. However, some have misused this avenue to
their advantage by defrauding people into buying their products
and/or services which are false.
Take for instance, buying a product using the Shoppe app,
although a customer can view the product that he or she wishes
to purchase, in most times customers end up with products that
do not look as good as the one shown in the Shoppe app. Many
customers tend to fall into the prey of purchasing such products
after having read the good reviews which is questionable
especially so when the purchased product is not what the
customer expects. In such circumstances, one can only suspect
that the reviews given are not genuine, i.e., perhaps fabricated by
the deceiving one.
Although there is the avenue of returning the product within
a prescribed period, not all dissatisfied customers will go through
the trouble of returning the product. Some products that are sold
over the internet are not the real deal - customers end up with
products that are fake (for instance often times, customers are
tricked into purchasing a product as they were given the
impression that the product can be purchased at a huge discount
but only to find out later that the product is not the original brand
that was thought to be.
Purchasing a food product over the internet can be a
challenge especially so when the ingredients contained therein
are either in fine print which are not readable or are not given
altogether. For instance, for Muslims, they only consume halal
food products and if the halal certification imprinted onto the food
product is not genuine, the customer will end up purchasing
something that does not meet his/her requirements.
There must be a way to combat food fraud from occurring in
eCommerce platforms. However, it is a challenging task
especially so when rogue traders are hosted outside the
jurisdiction of an authority body where such authority body is
unable to catch them and their efforts are often ineffective both in
identifying and in blocking accounts since the person behind it
can easily create another account that offers the same product.
Hence, it is important for competent authorities from all over the
world to impose strict policies to online businesses so as to avoid
food fraud from being sold online. It is surely a tedious process,
but the health of consumers must take priority or they would be at
risk of consuming food products that are either poisonous or
hazardous to their health.
In conclusion, while eCommerce platforms are helpful and
efficient in times of the pandemic, consumers must be made
aware of the existence of food fraud that is blooming over the
internet. They must be equipped with the knowledge of what is
food fraud, how and why they are occurring in eCommerce
platforms.
-End-

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Advancement of e-commerce is a platform for food fraud.

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