The Commerce Commission said today that, in its view, the distributor of Soft Seaweed Soap, SCI Natural (NZ) Ltd, had made false claims that the soap would help people lose weight, and may have breached the Fair Trading Act.
The Act prohibits false claims about goods' performance, uses or benefits.
Commission Chairman Dr Alan Bollard said that the Commission had intended to prosecute SCI Natural, but the company has gone into liquidation.
The soap, advertised at $29.95 a bar, was promoted nationally as a Chinese weight loss treatment. It was imported for approximately $3.20 a bar.
The promotion included endorsements from Penelope Barr and Dr John Lynch of Herne Bay.
Ms Barr told the Commission that although she had agreed to endorse the soap, she did not see the advertisements until after they were published, nor did she have any control over what was said in the advertisements.
She has since withdrawn her endorsement and ended her relationship with SCI Natural.
Dr Lynch is not a doctor of medicine, he is a Doctor of Divinity and has homeopathy qualifications. He also owned a distributorship for Soft Seaweed Soap.
The Commission had intended to charge not only the company but also the three individuals primarily responsible for the claims made about the soap. Although Dr Lynch and the sole director of SCI Natural, Bruce Bickerstaff, live in New Zealand, the person responsible for the advertising campaign for the soap, Alan Burrett, left for Australia earlier this year and is believed to be living there.
The Commission has therefore decided that it is not practical to proceed against the three men.
The Commission had the claims made about the soap checked by the National Heart Foundation, the Clinical Trials Research Unit at the University of Auckland and a registered medical herbalist.
All concluded there was no scientific evidence to support SCI Naturals claims that washing with Soft Seaweed Soap would cause weight loss.
SCI Natural provided references from several Chinese research institutions and an article from the Wall Street Journal, to support its claims.
The Commission found that many of the institutions did not exist, and none of the information it obtained from Chinese and other overseas research institutions supported SCI Natural's claims.
When the Commission checked the original of the Wall Street Journal article, it found a paragraph quoting two experts had been deleted. The paragraph included comment from a medical anthropologist stating that she had heard of no links between seaweed and weight loss, and a quote from a herbalist: "eating the soap may be a more effective slimming plan than bathing with it".
In Japan, the Nikkei Weekly reported: "When Japanese women learned early last year of a seaweed-containing Chinese soap that was said to literally wash away fat, they flocked to China and Hong Kong to buy the stuff. The fad lasted until summer, when it was collectively determined that the only thing going down the drain was money, not fat".
Media contact: Fair Trading Act Manager Rachel Leamy
Phone work (04) 498 0908, cellphone 021 662 773, home (04) 479 6334
