SEAFOOD lovers who shell out hundreds of dollars for tins of abalone are being cheated by unscrupulous shop owners, a senior Customs officer warned yesterday.
The price of the mollusc has risen dramatically in recent years and some Hong Kong retailers could not resist the temptation to engage in fraud, said acting senior superintendent in the intellectual property investigation bureau Simon Wong Shiu-ming.
''There is a big difference between low-grade and high-grade abalone,'' he said. ''People just change the paper wrappings and sell a tin costing $80 as if it is one worth $400.'' The scam was so well-organised that salesmen visited small food stores offering fake labels so the shop owners could do the switch themselves.
Mr Wong said the owners of the brand names did themselves no favours because many of them had not registered their products in Hong Kong.
''In that case there is very little we can do,'' he said. ''If they were putting something else in the cans we could get them for false trade description, but because they are still selling abalone that does not apply.'' But where the brand was registered Customs could crack down. In a three-day operation last week, investigators visited 68 food wholesalers and retailers, seizing 676 fake tins worth more than $400,000.
Until recently, manufacturers had done little to protect their intellectual property rights, Mr Wong said.