A food distributor is being investigated after Shenzhen's food authorities received a report that out-of-date snacks were being sold in local supermarkets with new manufacturing dates printed on their packaging.

Popular festival gifts including cookies and candies are among the goods seized Tuesday, Chinese media reported yesterday.

The Shenzhen industry and commerce authorities raided a food distributor in Liantang Industry Zone, Luohu District and seized 44 cartons containing more than 5,000 packets of out-of-date snacks.

The firm, whose name is being withheld while the investigation is still going on, will face a penalty up to three times the value of the goods if found guilty of changing the expiry date on the packaging. But it could be the manufacturer who reprinted the date, the Shenzhen Special Zone Daily said yesterday.

The authorities also warned other food distributors against the practice, saying exposure of their names when caught would badly damage their reputation.

A former employee of the firm was the whistle-blower on the practice. He said he had worked as a storekeeper at the firm late last year. "We were told to 'process' out-of-date snacks sent back by supermarkets. It's simple. We cleaned the original expiry date with water and printed a new one on it," the man said on condition of anonymity.

Careful consumers may note that the reprinted date often appears on different parts of the packet rather than the seal.

"I witnessed several hundred packets of out-of-date snacks being 'processed' and sent back to supermarkets during my stay at the company. They were sold easily during Christmas, New Year and the Spring Festival season," the man said.

Although many manufacturers refund distributors for unsold goods, they only pay a full refund on a limited number, normally 50 percent. To reduce losses, distributors change the expiry date and send the goods back to market, he said.

The man kept two packets of candies which had had their expiry dates changed as evidence. "I knew they had been sent to a store in Bantian. I bought them last week. A line of fuzzy figures printed at the bottom of the packets says they were manufactured Jan. 1, but you can see incomplete figures on the seal which have been rubbed off," he said.

The firm occupies a whole floor, about 1,000 square meters, of a building in Liantang, the Chinese report said. With some 30 employees, it serves as an agent for many categories of snacks and soy milk powder.

When the inspectors raided the firm Tuesday, several employees were counting snacks sent back from supermarkets. "We are preparing to send them back to the manufacturers," one of them claimed.

The inspectors later found the 44 cartons of snacks that had passed their sell-by date in August last year but had the manufacturing date reprinted as Dec. 18, 2006.

Editor: Donald