Our client is a U.S. company that ships its food products all over the world. One of their profitable markets is a small eastern European country where the client’s goods have a cult following. A competitor in that country noticed that our client’s products contain an ingredient approved for use all over the world except for that country. The competitor told the local government our client was importing illegal food. Consultants in that country retained to solve the problem advised our client to reformulate the product to eliminate the ingredient, which would have made the product barely profitable. We were asked to intervene.
The Food Lawyers® determined that the country and an adjoining country had a treaty to stimulate trade between them. The treaty provided that a food legal in either country was automatically legal for shipment to the other. We determined that our client’s product was 100% legal in the adjoining country and the client was already doing business there. We advised the client to ship product through the adjoining country to the country where we were having the problem. This solved the problem completely.
The situation was remedied at zero expense, the profitable business was saved and the competitor’s sabotage was thwarted. Our client was happy, to say the least.