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Chinese company forges Corona beer |
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Written by Felix Da Silva (fdasilva@bitnip.com)
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Saturday, 09 June 2007 |
Mexican newspaper Reforma reported that that the Mexican company Grupo
Modelo, producers of the highly popular Corona Beer, have discovered
that one million boxes of its product were sold last year in China
under a lookalike brand, Cerono, and that nothing has been achieved in
terms of stopping the damage.
China is quite rampant in its piracy of software, movies, designer handbags and other intellectual property. However, this is the first time I've seen the goodwill of a beer being exploited. This is troubling as lately, there are more and more stories on Chinese products being poisonous.
Recently, Chinese authorities acknowledged for the first time that ingredients exported to
make pet food contained a prohibited chemical, stepping up their probe of two
Chinese companies' roles in one of the USA's largest animal-food recalls. Not long after that recall, toxic toothpaste made in China was found in the USA. With these recent fairly public stories on poisonous products made from China, I wonder what they put in their beer.
Being a beer enthusiast myself, this comes as disturbing news. First of all, the passing off done by Cerono will probably damage the established goodwill of Corona. Secondly, the forgery is so well done that even when I'm sober, it will be hard for me to tell that it is fake.
I hope that Grupo Modelo wins in whatever action they bring against the Chinese company so that we don't have to be worried about whether the beer we are drinking might be from China and could probably be poisonous.
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