Local villagers snatch counterfeit goods to be destroyed at a landfill on the outskirts of Xuzhou city, East China's Jiangsu province, March 10, 2015. [Photo/IC]

Farmers took away tons of substandard and counterfeit goods on March 10, which were supposed to be destroyed in a Xuzhou suburb in Jiangsu province, East China, ignoring law enforcement officers' warning not to do so. Among the goods were food and healthcare products, chemicals and electric wires.

It is an irony that the counterfeits and substandard goods that quality supervisors seized from the local markets to protect people's health and interests are actually popular among consumers.

It is also an irony that law enforcement raids on rural markets mostly take place before and during Spring Festival while for the rest of the year they turn into havens for those making and selling counterfeit and substandard products, whose main consumers are the elderly and children left behind by their migrant worker-parents.

One example of such cheap products is the electric kettle, which is available for half the price of a good or genuine one and whose major drawbacks include frequent short circuits and unpleasant smell of plastic in the boiled water.

Shops run by village or township people, especially farmers, control the retail networks and they choose the "best" available substandard and counterfeit products for their customers.

Price is the most important factor influencing farmers' consumption behavior. As long as the products are cheap or, better still, come free - like the ones taken away in Xuzhou suburb - rural people are ready to ignore the minor health hazards and safety threats.

"We check whether the products are edible. If they are not, we feed them to the pigs," a woman was quoted as saying while carrying two big boxes of substandard soybean milk powder and condiments to her home in Xuzhou.