Erase expiry date of products: simple action, unpredictable consequences

The working group of Ministry of Health was inspecting at a drugstore at Lang Son City. Photo: D.N

"Magic" the expiry date

All types of consumer goods and products, especially pharmaceuticals and foodstuffs, have clear and specific shelf-lives and they need to be recalled or destroyed upon expiry. However, some establishments still use "tricks" to avoid destroying products and reuse them by stealthily putting them into the market for consumption, especially in remote areas. Others are more "sophisticated" by erasing the expiry date and replacing it with a new expiry date to deceive consumers.

According to Market Management Unit 1 - Hanoi Market Management Department, this agency was consolidating dossiers for handling a production facility in Soc Son district with signs of erasing expiry date and sticking a new "expiry date" on tens of thousands of bottled water products.

Besides that, the working group of Hanoi Market Management force discovered and temporarily seized more than 15,000 stamps with a manufacture date and expiry date of all kinds, two jars of cleaning solution and one machine "date model".

This was not the only case. Previously, in 2016, forces detected 50,000 units of medicines of all kinds (antibiotics, nerves, supplementary foods and detoxification medicines) which were expired or had unknown origin due to erasing, deleting or correctingthe date to sell to the patients at the production facility of Tran Thi Anh Tuyet (located at Hang Ma Ward, Hoan Kiem District, Hanoi). The violation was that the Western medicines in the box were erased and printed with a new date or modified date. For medicines that were tablets packed in film bags with a printed date with watermarks, the corners were cut, so they would not be detected by consumers as expired.

The embossing of new expiry date was made quite simple. If the manufacturer had used embossing technology (for metal packaging), it was easy to remove the date by using with javen or acetone, and then apply a new expiry date to the product.

With product stamping by ink, the subjects would use manual or automatic date stamping machines of all sizes. It could "magic" the old term into the new one easily. For products using plastic packaging, paper, business owners often stick homemade stamps on the expiry date to cover them.

Sharing with reporters, employees of a pharmacy said the most common and easiest way to eliminate an expiry date was still to remove the part of the blister pack with the expiry date. For medinciness with only numbers, the seller might change the last number like 2006 into 2008. Many kinds of medicines just need a scraper, scissors, eraser, ballpoint pen or alcohol to wipe off the expiry date but there were also types of medicines which need machines to peel off the outer blister layer and stamp the new date.

"The types of medicine are foreign medicine that were expensive and in demand, such as antibiotics, cardiovascular, blood pressure and pain relief," the employee said.

Manual stamping machine products can be bought for between VND 1 to 1.5 million in the market currently. The advanced types were sold in some stores with the prices about VND 3-4 million.

Regulations are clear

According to experts, the elimination of expiry date of products used in the human body such as pharmaceuticals, food and drinking water would pose many potential risks to human health. With Western medicines, if using expired medicines, it will lead to unpredictable consequences.

Le Van Truyen, an expert in the pharmaceutical industry, said the expiry date indicated on the packaging was an important criteria to confirm the quality of the medicines.

According to this expert, the medicines contain complex compounds and these components would break down over time and make them less effective and potentially harmful. Seriously it would cause negative effects on users.

On the management agencies side, Nguyen Viet Cuong, Chief Inspector of Hanoi Department of Health, said according to regulations of the Ministry of Health, the expiry date should be written in numbers or words indicating month and year. The number of months would consist of double figures or be written in words. The number indicating the year was the last two digits of the year. For example, if medicine has the expiry date of September 19, meaning from September 1, 2019, the medicine was expired. The Pharmaceutical Law stipulates that "changing and correcting information on the expiry date shown on labels without the permission of the competent State agencies" was an act of producing fake medicine, which would be criminally handled.

According to lawyer Nguyen Anh Thom, Law Office of Nguyen Anh, Hanoi, based on the current law, the sale of expired medincines might be handled with an administrative violation in accordance with Decree 176/2013/ND-CP dated Novemeber 14, 2013 stipulating sanctioning of administrative violations in health. Specifically, a rate of monetary sanction from VND 40 million to VND 50 million would be imposed for selling unqualified medicines or expired medicines. The rate of monetary sanctionfrom VND 10 to 20 million would be imposed for the act of selling medicines which did not meet standards of quality or expired medicines.

Besides that, the violating establishment would lose the right to use pharmaceutical practice certificates and certificates of eligibility for trading medicines for three to six months as prescribed, forcing the refund of all the money earned from selling and forced to destroy of all medicines as prescribed.

“In cases that the use of medincines causes damage to users’ health, pharmaceutical establishments must take responsibility for compensating non-contractual damage to victims in accordance with the provisions of the Civil Code 2015” Thom said.