Crest Is Fined Nearly $1 Million in China
|
Version 0 of 1. SHANGHAI — The Chinese authorities have fined the Crest toothpaste division of Procter & Gamble nearly $1 million for what regulators said was false advertising, a Shanghai municipal agency said on Tuesday. The American brand overplayed the effects of some of its toothpaste and used digital software to “touch up” images used in advertising to make teeth look whiter, the regulatory agency, the Shanghai Administration for Industry and Commerce, said in a post on its official microblog on the Sina Weibo platform. The regulator said it had fined Crest 6.03 million renminbi, or about $977,000, an amount described by the Chinese news media as the biggest fine of its type on record. Crest said on its official Chinese microblog on Tuesday that the advertisement in question was pulled in the middle of last year, and it did not indicate whether it planned to contest the fine. Procter & Gamble could not immediately be reached for comment. China has been trying to strengthen consumer protection laws and beef up punishment for businesses found to have misled shoppers. Global companies like Apple, Nikon and Volkswagen have been under the regulators’ glare in recent years. Crest is a leader in China’s fast-growing toothpaste market, where Procter & Gamble competes with its American rival Colgate-Palmolive, which also sells the local brand Darlie through a joint venture. Crest said in its Sina Weibo post on Tuesday that all the brand’s products went through rigorous testing in China before going to market, to comply with Chinese law. ”Crest has always done its utmost to produce and sell high-quality, safe products for consumers,” the brand said, adding that its standards were the same around the world. |