Leftover food into flow code Mixed fish and dragons need to strengthen supervision...

"Never be biased against 'offcuts'!" After taking two photos of the three bags of food on the table from different angles with her mobile phone, Zhang Yan, who lives in Wuluju, Haidian District, Beijing, sent a message
recommending snacks in Moments.

The three snacks he recommended are pork jerky, beef jerky and walnut kernels, which have one common feature - they do not look good
.

"These are called leftover foods, which are those that are crushed and squeezed and do not look good
.
" Zhang Yan explained that the taste of these snacks is no different from the original, but the price is much cheaper, and it is definitely a good product
with "ugly and cheap price".

At present, leftover food is popular among more and more young people, and online shopping platforms have become the largest sales channel
for leftover food.
However, leftover food has problems such as uneven quality and shoddy charging, and there are hidden dangers
in food safety.

"Leftover food can not only benefit consumers, but also reduce costs and increase efficiency for enterprises, but the premise of 'win-win' is that the product must meet food safety standards
.
" Liu Junhai, a professor at the Law School of Chinese Minmin University, recently pointed out in an interview with a reporter from "Rule of Law Daily" that where leftover food is illegal, consideration should be given to introducing corresponding standards and specifications, and increasing supervision to ensure the safety
of consumers.

Sales of leftovers have skyrocketed

Yang Zhe, a self-proclaimed "senior foodie", knew about
leftover food a few years ago.

"At that time, a large bakery sold toast bread with an uneven appearance, but it tasted good
.
" Yang Zhe revealed that most of the original leftovers came from bakeries and cake shops, where the store bagged and sold
the leftover bread and cake sides.
Due to the cheap price, the audience is mainly middle-aged and elderly consumers
.
Today's leftover food, which is once again popular, is more like "Internet celebrity food", and young people who pursue curiosity 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 meat leftovers such as preserved meat and beef jerky, as well as various foods
such as chocolate wafer crushes, seaweed crushes, and walnut kernels.

"In the first two years, the business was average, and many consumers were worried about leftover food, thinking that it was 'leftover' or bad, and did not dare to mention the words leftover when promoting the product
.
" A merchant selling jerky scraps revealed to reporters that his main business is beef jerky processing, because each batch of processing can leave some scraps, in order to avoid waste, these jerky scraps are seasoned again and sold
.
In the past year, leftover food has been very popular, and some customers have even specifically asked whether the product is leftover food, so businesses will push the concept of
leftover food when publicizing.

A set of data is also enough to illustrate the popularity
of leftovers.

According to the "White Paper on New Potential of Consumption in the First Quarter of 2022" (hereinafter referred to as the "White Paper") released by the Magic Mirror Market Intelligence Data Platform, in the first quarter of 2022, the sales of snack scraps related products on an e-commerce platform was 20.
3 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 1749.
23%.

The problem of uneven products is frequent

"Don't doubt the strength of leftover food" "Leftover food is delicious and not expensive, don't feel distressed by hoarding".
.
.
On a social platform, many posts promoted the advantages of
leftover food to netizens.

Is leftover food really affordable? After investigation, the reporter found that the current situation is not optimistic
.

After browsing the evaluation of a number of stores selling leftover food on an e-commerce platform, the reporter found that many consumers complained that the food was not worthy of the name, and even had problems such as
shoddy and selling "three no" products.

Yang Zhe once bought a five-pack promotional package of leftover meat in an e-commerce store, and found that the product packaging was very simple, the plastic packaging bag only printed with pork preserved words, and there was no specific identification such as manufacturer and product information, and even key information such as production date and shelf life were only printed on
a small piece of white paper in the bag.

Yang Zhe asked the merchant about this, and the merchant explained that the products were all processed and produced by production lines, but the packaging methods were different, the quality was absolutely no problem, and the leftover food was not complete and genuine, so the original product packaging bag could not be used for packaging
.

"Unknown origin" is another major problem
in the current leftover food.
Some consumers complained that the pork they bought was mixed with some "I don't know what kind of shredded meat"
was mixed in.

The reporter found that this kind of "mixed products" is no accident, many consumers said that "unknown products" have been found in the purchased leftover food, and some foods in the same package taste and taste a lot different, not like the same batch, the same production line of food
production.

According to Li Zhi, who has been engaged in the food processing industry for many years, unless it is some large-scale food processing plants, the output of scraps is very limited
.

"Food scraps are scraps that appear during the preparation of food, and cannot be used
in genuine products due to shape and other reasons.
For the sake of economic efficiency, enterprises will control the generation of scraps, and even if they appear, most of them will be used as food raw materials and recycled and reproduced
.
Li Zhi believes that the leftover food sold on a large scale in practice cannot be ruled out from a variety of channels
.

As leftover food gradually becomes the "traffic password", many people ignore the price when buying, and some consumers find that some leftover foods under the banner of high quality and low price are almost the same as the original price, and some even exceed the original price
.

The "White Paper" mentioned that the inability to guarantee product quality, questionable cost performance, and the evolution of marketing concepts have become pain points
in the leftover food industry.
Some merchants use low-quality products, pet food, and advent food as snack scraps; Some merchants mislead consumers through packaging, and the real price of products is even higher than that of formal products; Others only add offcuts as a marketing concept to general merchandise
.

Relevant standards and specifications are urgently needed

"Leftover food is also food, and food business operators must comply with relevant laws and regulations such as the Food Safety Law to ensure that products meet food safety standards
.
" Chen Yinjiang, deputy secretary-general of the Consumer Rights Protection Law Research Association of the China Law Society, pointed out that according to the provisions of the Food Safety Law, food packaging should have information such as food name, ingredient list, producer name, address, production date, shelf life, and production license number
.
Although the "bulk mode" is mostly used for leftover food, 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 Consumer Rights Protection Law clearly states that consumers have the right to know, so merchants cannot shirk providing product information for any reason such as simple packaging, let alone sell "three no" food
.

In view of the fact that most leftover foods are sold in online channels, Chen Yinjiang reminded e-commerce platforms to also increase their review efforts
.
The E-Commerce Law stipulates that platforms have the obligation to review the qualifications of merchants, and in the fields of food, medicine, and other fields related to citizens' life, health and safety, where the platform fails to fulfill the qualification review obligation and causes damage to consumers, it shall bear corresponding responsibilities
.
Therefore, while calling on merchants to abide by the law, they should strengthen the responsibility of e-commerce platforms, strictly review merchants, and actively intervene and assist in the investigation once consumer complaints arise to protect consumer rights and interests
.

"At present, there is no corresponding product standard or management specification for leftover food in China, making it in a 'gray' area
.
" Liu Junhai believes that in view of the particularity of leftover food, it can be considered that relevant departments or industry associations can issue corresponding standards and norms to avoid regulatory blind spots
.

For example, Liu Junhai said that the processing, storage, packaging and sales mode of leftover food can be regulated
.
For example, which food scraps are suitable for sale and which 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 foods should also be strengthened, relevant departments should conduct random inspections of the production and sales of key categories of foods such as minced meat, and 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 the crackdown, increase the illegal costs of illegal businesses, and work together to strictly control the quality and safety of leftover food
.