The Fair Trading Law, the product’s origin and the retail seller’s responsibility

In the first case ("Schneider + Klein S.R.L. s/inf. ley 22802" - Exp. C. 50756 - 13/02/2004), the company appealed Resolution No 781/2003, of the Internal Trade Argentine Commission (Dirección Nacional de Comercio Interior), that had imposed a fine of AR$ 8,000. The infringement consisted in having products ready to be sold with instructions in a foreign language which had not been translated into Spanish in one case, and without the indication of the country where they were produced or manufactured, in the other.

We consider of interest the infringement of article 1, section “b” (country of origin), because the product for which the fine was imposed had on its label as its origin identification the capital letters “EEC”, of the European Economic Community.

Although in some cases our law rules admit the indication of the origin by the use of words written in a foreign language, in this case the possible interpretation of the letters was not the reason for the fine imposed.

The court, emphasizing the wording included in the rule, clarified that the law requires to indicate the country of origin where the products are produced or manufactured, by stating “... the indications of the labels should contain expressions that leave no doubt as to the country where the product was made .... and the analyzed label does not have the conditions required by the governing law, .... because it does not inform which country the product is from ”.

Despite the recognition of our country to the status and importance of the European Economic Community as such, it is important to show, following the criterion of the referred court decision, that the objective of the law is to identify the country and not the region, common market, or continent. From the point of view of the consumer of the product, this requirement becomes more important considering the number of countries that integrate the European Economic Community, notwithstanding all the control systems that, for all those countries, may exist according to the rules of the EEC about product manufacturing and labeling.

In the second case ("WAL-MART Argentina S.A. s/inf. ley 22802" – Exp. C. 50570 - 12/12/2003), the company had been fined AR$ 30,000 as a consequence of the omission, in one of the products it was selling, of the identification of the lot number that the product belonged to.

In its defense, the company argued that the omitted indications should not be demanded from it, in its character of retail seller, as it only places the products on the market without taking care of the labeling, a job that is done by the manufacturer of the product. To do so, it had identified the provider of the respective product and asked for the application of article 6 of Law No 22,802.

The court, repeating the criterion used in earlier precedents, left the argument of the defense with a different interpretation without effect. It said that the exemption contained in article 6 of the Fair Trading Law was applicable when “the certainty of the indications contained in the labels is questioned, but not when what is charged to the seller is the lack of the label, concerning the origin, denomination and quality of the products.”

It added that the retail sellers should not only provide everything that was necessary to ensure that the products comply with the conditions imposed by the governing rules at the moment of the purchase by the retail sellers, but also maintained that situation “until the moment of been purchased by the consumer, as the only way to protect their rights”.