Laive called its cheese 'artesanal' for eight years — Indecopi said it was industrial

From 2016 to 2024, Laive — one of Peru's big dairy brands — sold 'Queso Fresco Artesanal Laive', advertised as artisanal on the packaging, the company website and its Facebook page, with natural ingredients implied by the name. The promise held for nearly eight years. Then Indecopi asked the question the word artesanal makes: who made it, and how?

The answer was: an industrial process. Peru's sanitary rules allow 'artesanal' only for predominantly manual production; Laive's evidence — an internal document and a video — was rejected because it lacked a certain date and any independent certification of a manual process. In Resolution 119-2025/CCD-INDECOPI of 1 July 2025, Indecopi found deception under Article 8 of Legislative Decree 1044, fined Laive 20 UIT — S/ 107,000 — and ordered the 'artesanal' advertising stopped everywhere it ran.

Laive had argued the word was justified: production was 'predominantly manual', it said, with decisive worker intervention from milk reception to packaging, and it cited the dictionary and a 2021 Indecopi precedent. The commission disagreed: without proof, the word was an unfair advantage — and Laive was entered in the Registry of Infringers.