Gatchalian quizzes e-commerce sites over sale of unregistered food supplements

Senator Sherwin Gatchalian on Thursday placed some top online selling platforms in the Philippines in the hot seat for allowing unregistered food supplements to end up in virtual shopping carts of Filipino consumers.

During a joint panel hearing on internet transactions, Gatchalian showed brands of coffee mix and protein powder being sold from e-commerce sites Lazada and Shopee despite being flagged by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

"This is something that the public consumes. Not everyone also goes to the FDA and searches their website. If these products are being sold in these platforms there's a big chance that we may be fooled and consumers will buy it and take all of these things to the detriment of their health," he said.

"Obviously, the platforms are not doing enough to stop these kinds of unscrupulous activities in their own platform," he added.

Lazada CEO Raymond Alimurung, also present during the hearing, said the platform has a system in place to avoid the sale of these products.

"The presence of violation will not necessarily correlate to us not doing our responsibility. However, we do recognize that it is occurring," he said.

"For pharmaceutical supplements, we actually use AIs... However, there is still a chance that some of these are going to get through and what we do, we respond to complaints and notices by regulators and add it to what we are doing," he added.

Lazada vowed to continue strengthening its "reasonable and practical" safeguards to build consumer trust.

Shopee, represented by lawyer Jaimmie Hans-Segovia, said it also implements mechanisms to protect its customers.

'Cracked, unlicensed products'

At the same hearing, the Optical Media Board flagged unauthorized sales of storage devices and equipment, as well as unlicensed software.

"Online shopping has likewise opened a new upsurge of intellectual property piracy. E-commerce sites and social media platforms became huge enablers for pirates and counterfeiters," OMB chairman Anselmo Adriano said.

He said a cracked version of Adobe Photoshop is being sold online for as low as P18; Microsoft Office 2010 comes with a price tag of P30; and AutoCAD is being sold at a low of P40.

The sale of USBs and external storage devices with compiled pirated movies is also becoming rampant, he added.

Lazada said it has an intellectual property portal and blacklisting system to prevent the sale of these products.

"The brand owners are enrolled in this portal and they can give us notice, and we will act very quickly. It's possible that they are not doing it or they are not doing it fast enough," Alimurung said.

"We just have to continue to develop a better mouse trap as these guys try to develop better mice," he added.

Segovia likewise said Shopee has a procedure on taking down counterfeit and incompetent products.

Gatchalian said the Internet Transaction bill which he authored aims to create a safe e-commerce environment in the country where honest online entrepreneurs can thrive. — BM, GMA News