Fake apples and Viagra outstrip Gucci

AT least one-in-every 20 goods on sale is a fake according to the latest figures from the European Union. The counterfeiters have never been as busy, having decided to swap quality for quantity.

Fake Gucci and Tommy Hilfiger are a thing of the past. Instead Viagra, apples, children's toys and soap have taken their place.

"Everything that can be sold is now being copied," EU customs commissioner Laszlo Kovacs said yesterday releasing the latest figures.

He estimated that between 5% and 7% of total world trade is now in fake goods, in a business worth at least €450 billion a year.

The only real indication they have of what is being counterfeited comes from the goods that are recognised as such and seized by customs and police.

In 2003 they seized 32 million CDs, DVDs and cassettes, 33 million cigarettes and 12 million batches of children's toys.

The increase in seizures of fake children's toys was almost 1000% on the previous year.

Food, alcohol, sweets, chewing gum and even apples are also growing markets for counterfeiters, and officials doubled their seizures in 2003.

But the most worrying fake goods were airplane parts, medical equipment and medicines, like the male impotency pill Viagra, which they are finding in increasing quantities in commercial freight and in the mail.

Pfizer, which manufactures the pill in Cork, is so concerned that they employ a team to investigate attempts to counterfeit their drugs.

Mr Kovacs said: "Something like DVDs, which are easy to produce in quantity, are now more profitable than drug smuggling. But all of this has cost Europeans 200,000 jobs."

60% of the fakes come from China. They arrive in the 1,000 flights a week from China but to fool customs they change patterns and routes all the time.