WP, pg1: FDA Scrutiny Scant In India, China as Drugs Pour Into U.S.

[DeepModem Mom]

FDA Scrutiny Scant In India, China as Drugs Pour Into U.S.
Broad Overseas Checks Called Too Costly
By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 17, 2007; Page A01

India and China, countries where the Food and Drug Administration rarely conducts quality-control inspections, have become major suppliers of low-cost drugs and drug ingredients to American consumers. Analysts say their products are becoming pervasive in the generic and over-the-counter marketplace.

Over the past seven years, amid explosive growth in imports from India and China, the FDA conducted only about 200 inspections of plants in those countries, and a few were the kind that U.S. firms face regularly to ensure that the drugs they make are of high quality.

The agency, which is responsible for ensuring the safety of drugs for Americans wherever they are manufactured, made 1,222 of these quality-assurance inspections in the United States last year. In India, which has more plants making drugs and drug ingredients for American consumers than any other foreign nation, it conducted a handful.

Companies based in India were bit players in the American drug market 10 years ago, selling just eight generic drugs here. Today, almost 350 varieties and strengths of antidepressants, heart medicines, antibiotics and other drugs purchased by American consumers are made by Indian manufacturers.

Five years ago, Chinese drugmakers exported about $300 million worth of products to the United States. Eager to meet Americans' demand for lower-cost medicines, they, too, have expanded rapidly. Last year, they sold more than $675 million in pharmaceutical ingredients and products in the U.S. market....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/16/AR2007061601295.html?hpid=topnews

[Deja Q]

1. Low cost? Look at the shelves. Those are not low cost items.

If these countries want to be a useful part of the global community, surely they need to clean up their acts? When providing goods and services, and forgive me if my age is showing, one usually demands nothing less than a quality product.

Why do Americans tolerate cheaply priced Dell computers whose capacitors bulge and burst within 4 years and offshored call centers that are nothing more than parrots reading a cue card; the jobs taken from people who actually know the inner workings of things and therefore have more intrinsic value? Simple, because it costs less.

Well, the sticker cost at any rate. Anyone who talks "TCO" or "ROI" these days is full of a soft, brown substance and I am not referring to silly putty.

I love it when the $25,000 industrial scanner (made in China) breaks every 4 months and whose replacement part only works for a short period of time before it breaks again too. :sarcasm:

[UpInArms]

2. It's not just drugs - it's food too: Globalization in Every Loaf

Globalization in Every Loaf

DOWNERS GROVE, Ill. — In a glassed-off area in the headquarters of Sara Lee, a handful of specialists study computer screens and flat-screen televisions beaming the latest weather reports and commodity prices. They are sourcing ingredients from all over the world to make Sara Lee’s assortment of breads, deli meats and microwaveable desserts.

The lowering of trade barriers more than a decade ago has pushed food companies to scour the globe for more exotic — or the cheapest — ingredients to compete in a more global marketplace, not unlike automakers shipping in parts from all over. But with America’s relatively permissible food-import rules and weak inspection regime, is the trend to assemble food from so many far-flung locations heightening the risks of contamination?

<snip>

Despite having the world’s most expansive and efficient agricultural sector, America is hardly the only place where large food processors like Sara Lee, Kraft and General Mills have looked to acquire the dozens of ingredients that make up their microwaveable meals, processed cheeses, baked snack foods and breakfast cereals.

What trade commission figures show is that ingredients are streaming in from more than 100 countries, including China, India, the Philippines and countries in sub-Saharan Africa. In some cases, consumer demand for more ethnic foods in the United States is pushing companies to import harder-to-find foods from exotic locales, but in other cases the phenomenon is simply a function of the way modern processed foods are assembled. The imported ingredients include caseins and caseinates (enzymes found in milk that are used as milk protein substitutes for pizza cheeses) and gums and resins that are used as binders to, for example, give chicken nuggets a certain consistency.

...more...

[Deja Q]

3. That's good to know the next time I watch a cereal commercial with the sappy piano music

saying how they care and use only the finest ingredients. :rofl:

Maybe American consumers can go back to eating hot dogs. Given the price of most "ethnic foods", I'm surprised demand is going up.

[DeepModem Mom]

5. Thanks for this info, UpInArms! nt

[babylonsister]

4. This is scary; NYT's covering this also. So, we can basically be

poisoned, but there's hardly any oversight. One major mistake and poof! lots of us die.

From NYT:

The NYT's drug story seeks to make the problem of unregulated foreign medical manufacturing less abstract. Their piece focuses on two incidents in which Chinese counterfeit drug ingredients killed dozens of people: one in Haiti in 1996 and one last year in Panama. In both cases, the FDA tried to determine the source of the chemicals, hoping to prevent further poisonings and in each case the agency was stymied by an ambiguous supply chain, poor record keeping, and unhelpful Chinese officials. The paper concludes that no agency has the authority to police the pharmaceutical industry at every stop in the supply chain, leaving makers of tainted or counterfeit components to continue operating with impunity.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/17/health/17poison.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin

[DeepModem Mom]

6. Thanks for this link, bsister! nt

[MannyGoldstein]

7. Go Free Trade! Go Free Trade!

The gift that keeps on giving! Jobs obliterated AND people killed.

But really, it doesn't matter - we Democrats refuse to hold our own responsible for this.