On 18 July, the Consumer Council of Hong Kong issued an apology to Nongfu Spring regarding their rating of its bottled water. This comes two days after the topic “Nongfu Spring demands apology from Hong Kong Consumer Council” (#农夫山泉要香港消委会道歉#) reached the top of the Hot Search list on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform with 45.26 million views.
The start of the saga was on 15 July when the Consumer Council held a press conference, publishing their test results for 30 common bottled water products including Nongfu Spring’s water. In the statement, it said that samples from Mainland brands, Nongfu Spring and Ganten have a bromate amount at the EU limit, 3 micrograms per litre (mg/L). Bromate is a byproduct for disinfection, and excessive intake can cause nausea and vomiting.
Nongfu quickly issued the above viral statement via its lawyers which demanded an apology, stating that the EU standard does not apply to its product. First of all the EU standard is much stricter than the ones used in China, Hong Kong SAR, Japan, the US and the WHO, which is 10 mg/L. For the sake of argument, the EU standard used by the Council was for natural mineral water, instead of drinking water, which allows a bromate amount of 10mg/L. Nongfu Spring categorises its product as “natural drinking water”, instead of “natural mineral water”, so the standard was misapplied. Other grievances Nongfu pointed out were wording such as “limit” which is unprofessional because falling into the limit still means it is up to standard. Symptoms of nausea and vomiting, on the other hand, can only be induced by an amount, thousands of times the current standard.
The outcome, was of course, that the Consumer Council apologised and changed its rating of Nongfu Spring from 4.5 stars to 5 stars. Some Chinese netizens accused the Consumer Council of twisting words to try and bully a Mainland brand and felt vindicated when the consumer watchdog apologised. However, some netizens from Hong Kong felt that the Council budged under pressure from a giant corporation from the Mainland and feel the watchdog is no longer unbiased and independent. But regardless of their opinions, the market is the final verdict and Nongfu Spring’s share prices grew 3% on 18 July.
