Market Surveillance

Market Surveillance

點閱：4959

What are the purposes of market surveillance?

The main purposes of market surveillance performed by the BSMI are to monitor the safety of products sold on the market to ensure that products do not endanger consumers, and also to protect public interests such as fairness in trade. It complements the product safety regulations implemented before products enter the marketplace.

What are the products covered by market surveillance?

The market surveillance activities launched by the BSMI focus mainly on regulated products under the governance of the Commodity Inspection Act. The BSMI also keeps an eye on non-regulated products in accordance with the Consumer Protection Act.

What does the BSMI do?

The BSMI adopts an annual plan for carrying out market surveillance activities. It is prepared at the beginning of each year and forwarded to BSMI Branches located around the country for implementation. The annual plan identifies products of high risks and specifies principles for conducting surveillance activities. The following approaches are taken by the BSMI to carry out market surveillance.

Below are further explanations about some of the activities.
Market Checks: products were market-checked for their compliance with labeling requirements, about 78% being checked at physical stores and the rest at online stores.
Testing Projects: projects were implemented to test products purchased from the market. These projects focused on compliance of the products’ critical features against national standards. They are also used to understand the characteristics of nonregulated products. The findings may prompt further actions and analyses in order to determine whether additional control is required.

Reports From Volunteers & Consumers: The BSMI recruits volunteers to help uncover suspect products on the marketplace. In addition, consumers are reporting suspect products sold online to the BSMI and the number of such reports increases exponentially in recent years.

Incident Report & Product Recall: Timely incident reports are critical to avoid possible injury or serious accident from reoccurring. To encourage reporting, the BSMI operates a Product Safety Information Website allowing people involved in incidents, people with obligatory duty of reporting or volunteers to upload the information on incidents caused by unsafe products. Investigation will be initiated upon receipt of the reports. The website also provides unsafe product information on recalled products and violating products. The information is updated daily by the Bureau, sourcing from domestic companies and competent authorities of other countries.

How does the BSMI monitor the safety of products sold online?

With the users' growing reliance on the Internet to purchase goods, more efforts were put in to browse through the popular online shopping websites in Taiwan to check compliance of online shopping products. The BSMI strengthens cooperation with online shopping platforms by imposing an obligation on the operators to ensure that information about the compliance of products with mandatory requirements is made available to consumers, and promotes safety awareness to consumers and sellers through social medias like facebook or App Line.

What are the penalties of noncompliant products?

Penalties, including fines, recall of products, implementation of corrective actions, prohibition of display/sale and rescission of certificates, will be imposed on noncompliant products depending on the situations of violation.

• 編修日期：2022/04/25
• 上稿單位：標準檢驗局