Showing posts with label fda. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fda. Show all posts
Sunday, June 17, 2007
This Washington Post story ties in the quality control problems in China to the huge new market for generic drugs from India and China. Inspections from the FDA are nearly non existent, and the market is growing exponentially fast.
Here is where I am stumped. We can not import cheap drugs from Canada. The Bush administration says they can't be assured as being safe. The pharmaceutical industries profits have nothing to do with it. Yet at the same time, we are just hoping the Chinese manufacturers don't put fertilizer, or engine coolant in a growing number of generic medications. Maybe we should give them to our pets first to see if they are ok. No. Not really.
Unsafe isn't the only problem. No actual drug may be another. China is going through an unfettered capitalism phase. By this I mean, they have a lot of business people who are unencumbered by regulation so they may press some corn starch together and call it a blood pressure medication.
Let's let the market settle this one. Congress might revisit the Canadian drug issue on these grounds.
Oh, and most vitamins these days are being produced in China. Maybe there is some ground dehydrated tiger penis in the mix now for extra vitality. Mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Jim Hightower has a commentary about Nestle and Hershey lobbying the FDA to be able to sell chocolate that actually contains no chocolate. Public commentary on the proposal ends June 25th, so for those of you who are chocoholics out there, you might want to go here to scream at the FDA for a bit.
There also has been controversy in the recent past about manufacturers selling "guacamole dip" which is an amalgram of chemicals, soybean oil, and 2% avocado powder. Mmm, mmm, mmm. We need to take our food more seriously, dare I say like the French. We were out the other day, and my wife wanted a lemonade from the fountain. Minute Maid lemonade contains 0% fruit juice. In other words it's not lemonade.
Truth in labeling laws are critical for consumer protection. I am not saying manufacturers can't sell this crap, they just have to call it something different. Hershey's dark goo of chemicals isn't a good name to market so they try to get the FDA to approve their scheme of ripping off consumers for more profits. As Jim Hightower noted:
To add insult to injury, Hershey even blames us for its proposed rip-off, claiming that the deceptive label is needed to keep up with the changing "consumer taste preference." Oh, right – I'm sure there’s an explosion of pent-up consumer demand all across America for that yummy taste of chemically modified trans fats. Who wants that old cocoa richness when we could have the waxy texture of the artificial stuff?
Only in America.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration came up with a plan earlier this year for tough regulations on handling fresh produce but its parent agency gave the proposal a cold reception, the Wall Street Journal reported on its Web site on Wednesday.
Officials of the Department of Health and Human Services rejected the FDA plan presented at a meeting in February after a series of health scares, the Journal reported, citing unnamed sources.
Terrorists attack us on 9/11. We suspend habeus corpus, attack a country that wasn't involved and spend a trillion in the process. We wire tap phones, read emails, think that the Geneva conventions and habeus corpus are quaint. We torture, we ship people to other countries who torture even more effectively than we do.
Food borne illnesses though can only be prevented in a way that might marginally affect profits of big donors to the GOP. Sure people die from them too. But, come on now. We aren't going to change our entire way of life, like hiring a few more inspectors just because some kids die from eating rotten hamburger meat.
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