Fruit store caught with dyed oranges

A fruit store in Yangpu district was caught selling dyed oranges at a higher price than what neighboring vendors were asking, local media reported Tuesday.

Although illegally dying fruit is not unheard of in Shanghai, the case shows the potential for unwary consumers to get cheated when buying oranges, which just came into season.

Before industry and commerce officials visited the store Monday, it had been selling the dyed oranges for 11 yuan ($1.75) per kilogram, according to an official surnamed Xu from the Yangpu district's industry and commerce bureau.

On Tuesday, a neighboring fruit vendor was selling the same kind of oranges, which were not dyed, for 7.6 yuan per kilogram.

By selling the oranges at a higher price, the store violated China's Consumer Rights Protection Law, said Ruan Zanlin, a professor from the College of Law at East China University of Science and Technology.

"It is considered unfair competition when a store sells the same variety of a product at an inflated price," Ruan told the Global Times. "At the same time, selling dyed oranges without informing customers why they cost more can constitute fraud."

The store's owner denied that he dyed the oranges, according to a report on the news website Eastday.com. He explained that he didn't realize the fruit had been dyed until officers came to his store. He promised to offer refunds to anyone who bought the oranges.

Xu said the fruit had been dyed heavily enough that it rubbed off on the hands of anyone who handled it. "Your hands would turn red just by touching the oranges," he told the Global Times.

According to the consumer rights law, the store owner should not only refund customers' money, but also offer additional compensation, Ruan said.

It would be difficult for authorities to determine who dyed the oranges because there is a long, complex chain of fruit wholesalers between the farms and the stores, Xu said.　

The local government is planning to create a fruit tracking system, said Gu Zhenhua, deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Food Safety Office. The system would be akin to the system used to track pork in the city, which is capable of tracing a product back through the chain of wholesalers to the farm where the pig was raised.

However, Gu also pointed out that it took the local government seven years to launch that system.