[shortsunblack]

Producers should be required to make disclosures in officially recognized boards/gazettes before substantially changing quality/composition/recipe/materials/function of any good. Make it 3 to 6 months. A consumer should not be screwed for buying an inferior product for the same price because a producer decided to reduce quality to increase margins. It's a form of information asymmetry that leads to inefficiency in markets.

This works even more easily if the product already needs to be registered in some gov't registry. For example books and with the case of substituting good quality paper with worse quality paper (less gsm or such).

[euroderf]

The all-purpose retort is "but that is proprietary information!"