Agreement between the Italian Government and Alibaba to tackle the problem of the sale of counterfeit Italian agricultural and food products.

The Italian Government has signed an agreement with the Chinese e-commerce giant in order to promote the excellence of Italian agricultural products and to fight against the phenomenon of counterfeit produce.

The agreement will enable Italian producers to satisfy the increasing demand for typical Italian products on the Chinese platform, which counts over 430 million consumers. The agreement aims at guaranteeing our Italian brands with a high level of protection against the counterfeit products market. This is also an important result in light of the fact that for decades the WTO has been searching for an adequate form of protection, which in this case has been achieved with a private company in the space of just a few months.

Since last year it has no longer been possible to find counterfeit Italian agricultural produce and foodstuffs on the Chinese website, which has prevented the monthly sale of 99 thousand tonnes of counterfeit Parmesan cheese, 10 times more than the production of the authentic cheese itself, and the sale of 13 million bottles of Prosecco which did not originate from the Veneto Region (in Italy). Italy is currently the only country on Alibaba, which has granted the same level of anti-counterfeit protection to DOP and IGP products as that provided for commercial brands. A level of protection which under this agreement is extended from the b2b platform, accessible solely to companies, to the b2c platform, consequently assuring that those 430 million Alibaba website users will be able to purchase genuine “Made in Italy” products.

The Ministry of Agriculture has set up an operational task force at the Anti-Fraud Inspectorate with the aim of identifying and reporting counterfeit products on a daily basis. The ads are removed within 3 days and the vendors are informed that they are violating Italian geographical indications and designations of origin.

We should point out that Italy has also invested in the promotion of Italian wine and food on the Chinese e-commerce platform. With this agreement Alibaba has undertaken to instruct both vendors and consumers on the importance of geographical indications and designations of origin in the food industry.