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No Evidence of Aloe Vera Found in the Aloe Vera at Wal-Mart, CVS (bloomberg.com)
From a Bloomberg report:The aloe vera gel many Americans buy to soothe damaged skin contains no evidence of aloe vera at all. Samples of store-brand aloe gel purchased at national retailers Wal-Mart, Target and CVS showed no indication of the plant in various lab tests. The products all listed aloe barbadensis leaf juice -- another name for aloe vera -- as either the No. 1 ingredient or No. 2 after water. There's no watchdog assuring that aloe products are what they say they are. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration doesn't approve cosmetics before they're sold and has never levied a fine for selling fake aloe. That means suppliers are on an honor system, even as the total U.S. market for aloe products, including drinks and vitamins, has grown 11 percent in the past year to $146 million, according to Chicago-based market researcher SPINS LLC. "You have to be very careful when you select and use aloe products," said Tod Cooperman, president of White Plains, New York-based ConsumerLab.com, which has done aloe testing. Aloe's three chemical markers -- acemannan, malic acid and glucose -- were absent in the tests for Wal-Mart, Target and CVS products conducted by a lab hired by Bloomberg News. The three samples contained a cheaper element called maltodextrin, a sugar sometimes used to imitate aloe. The gel that's sold at another retailer, Walgreens, contained one marker, malic acid, but not the other two.
If they can't even detect any, that stuff must be super potent!
....let there be ACTUAL consequences, maybe?
Charge Wal-Mart with fraud for selling falsely-labeled products. One count per bottle on the shelves.
That's a big fine, yes? Well, Wal-Mart, if it didn't know about the fraud (and I expect they didn't actually) should be able to go after the producer for the fines they had to pay on their behalf.
Oh, I'm sorry: their producer is some untraceable company in some faraway land (because they were the cheapest, natch) that doesn't feel like it needs to behave according to laws and skips out on paying Wal-Mart back?
Huh. Almost like that's a reason one would want to buy from - I dunno - a DOMESTIC company where one has at least reasonable surety they they're going to behave within the law (or face consequences of same if they don't)?
Let me be clear: I'm a staunch Republican and free marketeer. But I recognize that the government DOES have a role in consumer protection and labeling, and needs to act aggressively to ensure that consumers in a capitalist marketplace can make free choices based on reliable information.
One might also notice that this exposure alone would either incentivize the spread of the rule of law, or bringing back more industry to the US. All without a new government agency, new powers, or a bevy of new laws - but instead government just DOING WHAT IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE DOING in the first place.
-Styopa
No, it's not but it goes to show that companies self-regulating themselves is bullshit.
Article implies the FDA has no jurisdiction over this based on that they don't test cosmetics by default, but they do regulate based on it being a "misbranded" cosmetic product.
http://www.fda.gov/Cosmetics/G...
Sans regulation, the fraud was discovered.
Yes, but after how long? How many consumers have spent how many millions of dollars buying something that was not what it claimed to be, because "proving our product contains the ingredients we say it does is burdensome and anti-American?"
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
I loved this:
You have to be very careful when you select and use aloe products
...and have a degree in organic chemistry and access to an assay lab, he forgot to mention.
Someone had to do it.
You just need to make it illegal to [...]
So... a regulation?
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Which is cheaper;
a) testing a competitor's product and discovering that they are using a cheaper ingredient, then publicising same and defending claims in court/media whilst continuing to use authentic ingredients
OR
b) testing a competitor's product and discovering that they are using a cheaper ingredient and switching your manufacturing to the same ingredient and continuing to compete based on who has the best celebrity endorsement.
Hoping that competitors will spend money monitoring each other ignores a wealth of examples of collusion, kickbacks, price-fixing etc. and has the same sort of simplistic assumptions that a lot of 'free market will solve X' examples exhibit. Too much regulation is bad. That doesn't mean regulation is bad.
Or Girl Scouts in Girl Scout Cookies. This is some weapons grade bull shit deceptive advertising at its best!
Thirty four characters live here.
Probably, but someone would have to file an official complaint with the FTC.
The FTC's role is to keep companies honest, so wronged consumers won't have to personally seek recourse by individually suing companies that engage in wrongdoing.
If companies know the only recourse consumers have to being defrauded is to personally sue them (and probably spend more to do it than they can actually receive in damages), they'll increasingly come to regard fraudulent behavior as falling somewhere between "a norm" and "a best practice for maximizing shareholder value".
Just look at the practices of, say, the Cable TV industry, which has trained consumers to think it's OK for companies to advertise prices like "$19.95/month" even if the cheapest bill any real customer could EVER see is $36.47/month (after fees, taxes, and surcharges are added).
Or the way it used to be common for credit card companies to make your bill due on a Sunday, but treat payments received after 9am Friday as if they were made on Monday.
Or the way banks used to process the day's payments from largest to smallest, and process deposits AFTER payments (so they could charge more overdraft fees). A few years ago, either Chase or Citibank got nailed HARD for policies where you could deposit a thousand dollars cash into your checking account at 9am, then get dinged $30 in overdraft fees for a $7 debit card purchase at McDonald's or a $20 ATM withdrawal a few hours later EVEN THOUGH the "available balance" printed on your deposit slip might have been "$1003.47" (because they'd ALLOW you to withdraw $1003.47, but would charge overdraft fees if you withdrew more than $3.47 before the end of the day when they officially credited your cash deposit).
And yes, I do think there's abundant evidence from the past 10 years that large public corporations owned by institutional investors can EASILY become detached from things most people would regard as self-evident social norms (ie, openly sociopathic), and will BRAZENLY do things that are just plain EVIL unless the government makes it clear (with penalties) that it's not acceptable behavior and it's watching them.