Simply unethical !

There is a tendency for people to resort to unethical practice when they are driven by greed for money. This happens across different walks of life and even in different professions.

I was told that some farmers in China before selling their cordyceps to the wholesalers, would insert a piece of lead into each stem of the cordyceps to increase the weight of the cordyceps as they are usually sold by weight. But, we know that lead is poisonous and it damages the brain. That is the reason why we used unleaded petrol. For the smarter importers, they would probably use a metal detector to check and control the quality of the cordyceps they have imported. I understand Eu Yan Sang is doing it. Be smart when you next buy cordyceps.

Besides the cordyceps farmers, pig farmers also have their own tricks. As pigs are also sold by weight, what some of these pig farmers do is before selling off their livestocks, they would feed them with mess mixed with sand till their bellies bulge. That would help to increase the weight of the pigs considerably. Of course, this practice does not harm the consumers. But, it is simply unethical.

At the other end of the spectrum are the techno-guys. It has been a common secret that some of the IT retailers at Sim Lim Square (SLS) are able to sell their computer systems and products much cheaper because they replace the genuine components in the systems with those that are inferior and cost less. Of course, I believe that not all of them resort to this sort of unethical practice, but somehow the few black sheep have brought a bad name to SLS and hence a lower-quality and lower-reliability perception is held by some if not all the IT customers.