10 products that unscrupulous manufacturers fake most often
The more branded goods are produced, the more their fakes appear. Today, everything is copied - from perfumes and shampoos to food and cars. Large companies are struggling with unscrupulous competitors, but there are more than enough people willing to buy fakes. In our review, there are 10 items that are forged most often on the market.
Counterfeit, as a rule, expensive things. However, olive oil is worth it for unscrupulous sellers to imitate it. Today there is a whole market for fake olive oil. Most often, high-quality oil is diluted with cheaper ones, such as rapeseed. According to analytical estimates, about 50% of the olive oil sold in the world is adulterated.
The most famous case was the olive scandal in Spain in 1981, when olive oil diluted with rapeseed with the addition of aniline, an extract of coal tar used as an industrial lubricant, appeared on the market. Then about 700 people died from poisoning, many earned paralysis, problems with internal organs and neurological problems.
It is difficult for young people today to imagine how wildly popular funny toy animals Beanie Babies were in the mid-1990s. The demand was so great that fakes became inevitable. There was even a political scandal connected with these toys in 1998, when an American trade representative who arrived from China was detained at customs with fake Beanie Babies.
Along with truffles and caviar, kobe beef is one of the most expensive culinary delicacies in the world. The price per kilogram is from $ 200. Today, many restaurants offer this dish on their menu. But it should be understood that, most likely, this is not the meat that customers dream of trying.
Real kobe beef is produced only in Japan. This is an exquisite kind of marbled beef obtained from Japanese Kobe cows, grown using special technology. This meat is practically not imported.
There are hardly statistics on how many people got their lives as a result of "small happy misfortunes" when condoms were torn. But most of them should be grateful to Chinese low-quality fakes of famous "rubber" brands.
In 2008, Chinese police discovered an underground workshop where condoms of famous brands were manufactured and packaged. The law enforcement officers confiscated 4.65 million packaged contraceptives and another 1,100 kg of condoms ready for packaging. It took $0.03 to produce one condom, and fakes were sold on the Internet for $ 0.16.
Experts express concern that low-quality condoms can cause the spread of deadly diseases in poor countries, where they most often fall.
While most fakes are usually completely harmless to humans, fake malaria medicines kill hundreds of thousands of people. For most people in developed countries, malaria is something mythical, like the plague. But in Africa, this is a serious problem. The drug Coartem, created by the American company Novartis, is a favorite object of counterfeit pharmaceuticals. Fake Coartem in China. Every year hundreds of thousands of people die from a fake drug.
Today, in any grocery store, you can find dozens of types of various cheeses. Most of them are mass-produced by the dairy industry and are quite affordable for the average consumer. However, when it comes to elite cheeses from France, Italy and Switzerland, the market immediately faces fakes.
At the end of the XX century, the European dairy market was literally littered with fake elite cheeses. As a result, it was even decided to create a special cheese commission. The first representative office appeared in Italy. There is also a data bank with more than 10 thousand strains of dairy bacteria. They are used to establish the authenticity of cheese products.
Yes, things as big and complex in terms of design as cars are also forged. The undisputed leader in the auto parts market is the Celestial Empire. Chinese craftsmen manage to forge even elite-class cars, but most of their efforts are still focused on economy class cars.
In the early 2000s, Chinese cars simply flooded the market. The worst situation was with Volkswagen fakes. The Chinese did not just fake cars, they also managed to sell them twice as cheap as the originals. Attempts to put pressure on Asian plagiarism producers legally for the most part have not been successful.
Violins of the famous master Stradivarius are not cheese and not condoms, but they are forged with no less success. The last fake violin was sold in the USA in 2014 at auction for $ 15.9 million. It was possible to identify a terrible mistake only a few months after the auction. Those who forge Stradivarius violins, as a rule, are really masters of their craft. It is extremely difficult to identify a fake musical instrument. Sometimes this is possible thanks to chemical analysis, however, auction houses do not always go for it.
In 2012, a terrible food scandal broke out in the United States. It turned out that a significant part of Heinz ketchup on the market is fake. It is curious that fake ketchup was produced by the company itself, which, wanting to save money, ceased to comply with the production technology and substituted some ingredients for cheaper ones.
Such a popular brand as Apple simply could not help but become the target of industrial fraudsters. And again, China is the leader in counterfeiting. In the case of Apple, almost everything is forged: tablets, smartphones, watches, laptops, and so on. History knows several precedents of Apple Store forgery. Fake service centers even appeared in Chinese cities! The high cost of the corporation's products plays a cruel joke with it. Despite the fact that the Chinese authorities are actively fighting against such fakes, the wave that has formed cannot be stopped.