A little over two years ago, 3-A Sanitary Standards Inc. (3-A SSI) became aware that some companies from China were using the trademarked 3-A Symbol without authorization. Since then, the number of infringements has grown — as of August 2018, there were 18 known companies using the symbol in a fraudulent manner. This continuing problem threatens the integrity of the 3-A Symbol and exposes food manufacturers to the risk of purchasing equipment that doesn’t conform to expected hygienic design standards.
Interestingly, we first learned about the problem around the middle of 2016 from several of our symbol licensees in China. The number of properly licensed companies in China has grown over the past 10 years, and deep concern was expressed about the counterfeiters.