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Source Title: Supreme Law: E-Commerce Platforms Should Be Responsible For Problems With Online Food Purchase
Online shopping has become one of the public’s daily consumption methods. Today (December 9), the Supreme Law issued the “Interpretation on various issues relating to the applicable law in civil food safety litigation trials (1)”, clarifying the responsibility of electronic commerce platforms. The e-commerce platform does not carry out real name registration and review of licenses for food operators on the platform in accordance with the law, which harms the legitimate rights and interests of consumers. Consumers have the right to claim that the operators of the e-commerce platform and the food operators on the platform are in solidarity.
Zheng Xuelin, a member of the Supreme Court of Justice and president of the First Civil Division, said that in recent years, online shopping has become one of the most common forms of consumption in people’s lives, especially since The outbreak of the new crown this year, take-out catering has been unprecedented in activity.
According to statistics, from 2017 to the first half of 2020, people’s courts at all levels in the country have received 49,000 new disputes for online purchasing contracts in the first instance. Among them, around 30% of the disputes involved the liability of e-commerce platforms, while the food disputes were related to online purchasing contract disputes. Almost half of the cases represented 45.65%. For consumers, there are potential risks in buying food online. If the qualifications and reputations of online food operators cannot be guaranteed, it is easy to cause food safety problems.
Article 3 of the “Interpretation” published this time stipulates that the e-commerce platform operators have not performed the real name registration and review licenses for the food operators on the platform in accordance with the law, or have not fulfilled its obligations in accordance with the law, such as informing and suspending the provision of online trading platform services. The legitimate rights and interests of consumers have been harmed and consumers have the right to demand that the operators of the e-commerce platform and the food operators on the platform assume joint and several liability, so that the e-commerce platform can guarantee the food safety of consumers.
In practice, the operation of the e-commerce platform includes two ways of providing platform services and developing autonomous businesses. There are fundamental differences between the two modes of operation.
Article 2 of the “Interpretation” further clarifies the issues related to the autonomous operation of the platform. Paragraph 1 thereof stipulates that e-commerce platform operators mark food sold as autonomous businesses or that they have not marked as autonomous but actually carry out autonomous activities. If the food sold does not comply with food safety regulations, consumers have the right to claim that the operator of the e-commerce platform take responsibility for compensation as a food operator.
At the same time, in view of the fact that logos produced by e-commerce platforms can in practice mislead consumers, Article 2 (2) of the “Interpretation” stipulates that, although platform operators e-commerce companies do not conduct autonomous business, their logos It is enough to deceive consumers and convince them that the operator of the electronic commerce platform is autonomous, and the consumer has the right to claim that the operator of the electronic commerce platform assumes responsibility for compensation as a food operator to strengthen consumer protection of food online.
