Amazon Has Apparently Been Shipping Expired Food To Customers
Expired baby formula? Coming right up!
Amazon Has Apparently Been Shipping Expired Food To Customers
Expired baby formula? Coming right up!
Amazon is under fire after sending customers groceries past their expiry date.
Recent reporting by CNBC revealed that Amazon users have received everything from baby formula to beef jerky and granola bars that have been spoiled or expired.
In its investigation, CNBC also found that 40 percent of Amazon top seller products had five or more customer reviews that made mention of expired food.
Based on its multiple interviews with brands, customers, vendors and consultants, the news organization says it’s likely that these errors can be attributed to loopholes in the company’s tech and logistics system, which allows for third-party sellers and consultants to flood the online marketplace.
Amazon told CNBC that its third-party sellers are required to provide an expiration date to the company if they’re selling an item meant for consumption. They must guarantee the item has a remaining shelf life of 90 days.
A spokesperson from the online retailer added that it uses a combination of human and artificial intelligence to monitor its customer feedback on products. In the case that a seller violates its policies, Amazon can remove products or suspend an account.
“We have robust processes in place to ensure customers receive products with sufficient shelf life,” they said. “If customers have concerns about items they’ve purchased, we encourage them to contact our Customer Service directly.”
When CNBC brought a number of expired products to Amazon’s attention, it said it took action to ensure the listings complied with standards. It added that they were individual incidents as opposed to an issue that would constitute enforcement action against a seller or removal of products. But the same products brought to the tech giant’s attention still showed negative reviews posted as recently as this week, CNBC said.
Several consultants said Amazon needs to rely on more than just customer complaints and refunds to identify expired foods. This mishap comes just a few months after the Wall Street Journal released an investigative piece that showed Amazon was allowing sellers to list products without checking for consumer safety.
The August scandal prompted a number of Democratic politicians to write to Amazon owner Jeff Bezos and ask him to overhaul his company’s policy. In their letter, they asked that the products be taken down immediately over concern of customer injuries or death.
Follow us
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Want to republish a Modern Farmer story?
We are happy for Modern Farmer stories to be shared, and encourage you to republish our articles for your audience. When doing so, we ask that you follow these guidelines:
Please credit us and our writers
For the author byline, please use “Author Name, Modern Farmer.” At the top of our stories, if on the web, please include this text and link: “This story was originally published by Modern Farmer.”
Please make sure to include a link back to either our home page or the article URL.
At the bottom of the story, please include the following text:
“Modern Farmer is a nonprofit initiative dedicated to raising awareness and catalyzing action at the intersection of food, agriculture, and society. Read more at <link>Modern Farmer</link>.”
Use our widget
We’d like to be able to track our stories, so we ask that if you republish our content, you do so using our widget (located on the left hand side of the article). The HTML code has a built-in tracker that tells us the data and domain where the story was published, as well as view counts.
Check the image requirements
It’s your responsibility to confirm you're licensed to republish images in our articles. Some images, such as those from commercial providers, don't allow their images to be republished without permission or payment. Copyright terms are generally listed in the image caption and attribution. You are welcome to omit our images or substitute with your own. Charts and interactive graphics follow the same rules.
Don’t change too much. Or, ask us first.
Articles must be republished in their entirety. It’s okay to change references to time (“today” to “yesterday”) or location (“Iowa City, IA” to “here”). But please keep everything else the same.
If you feel strongly that a more material edit needs to be made, get in touch with us at [email protected]. We’re happy to discuss it with the original author, but we must have prior approval for changes before publication.
Special cases
Extracts. You may run the first few lines or paragraphs of the article and then say: “Read the full article at Modern Farmer” with a link back to the original article.
Quotes. You may quote authors provided you include a link back to the article URL.
Translations. These require writer approval. To inquire about translation of a Modern Farmer article, contact us at [email protected]
Signed consent / copyright release forms. These are not required, provided you are following these guidelines.
Print. Articles can be republished in print under these same rules, with the exception that you do not need to include the links.
Tag us
When sharing the story on social media, please tag us using the following: - Twitter (@ModFarm) - Facebook (@ModernFarmerMedia) - Instagram (@modfarm)
Use our content respectfully
Modern Farmer is a nonprofit and as such we share our content for free and in good faith in order to reach new audiences. Respectfully,
No selling ads against our stories. It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads.
Don’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. We understand that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarize or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
Keep in touch
We want to hear from you if you love Modern Farmer content, have a collaboration idea, or anything else to share. As a nonprofit outlet, we work in service of our community and are always open to comments, feedback, and ideas. Contact us at [email protected].by Lindsay Campbell, Modern Farmer
October 23, 2019
Modern Farmer Weekly
Solutions Hub
Innovations, ideas and inspiration. Actionable solutions for a resilient food system.
ExploreShare With Us
We want to hear from Modern Farmer readers who have thoughtful commentary, actionable solutions, or helpful ideas to share.
SubmitNecessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and are used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies.