I work for a Cosmetic/Health Care Company that distributes to Hospitals, Homes and so on... Our toothpaste is manufactured in China..This is not a problem for us (as we know our Toothpaste is safe and free of Diethylene Glycol (DEG)... My question is -if FDA is holding all imported toothpaste from China at Customs for testing ..-why has it not been on the FDA.Gov web page? This has been media driven... Any ideas??

Thanks for your thoughts on this..:thanx:

SM

I work for a Cosmetic/Health Care Company that distributes to Hospitals, Homes and so on... Our toothpaste is manufactured in China..This is not a problem for us (as we know our Toothpaste is safe and free of Diethylene Glycol (DEG)... My question is -if FDA is holding all imported toothpaste from China at Customs for testing ..-why has it not been on the FDA.Gov web page? This has been media driven... Any ideas??

Thanks for your thoughts on this..:thanx:

SM

There are news stories about it here (http://www.chinapost.com.tw/front/110669.htm%5C) and here. (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18841928/)


and, :read::cool:from the FDA Website, IMPORT ALERT #55-02. (http://www.fda.gov/ora/fiars/ora_import_ia5502.html)

I get a very uneasy feeling about this...

I think we should change it to: "We have met the enemy- it ain't us"
(Sorry POGO)

I just don't feel the dog food or this is just an accident. In my never ending quest to perfect paranoia, I wonder if these could be trial baloons.

I just don't feel the dog food or this is just an accident. In my never ending quest to perfect paranoia, I wonder if these could be trial baloons.

http://elsmar.com/jpg/tinfoilhat.jpg

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6699441.stm

Is this related to the discussion?

Could be.

Looks like more of a "we've lost face (trust)" than a "we got caught" issue.

Not too much unlike unscrupulous folks this side of the pond who are actually more sorry they got caught than they are about their actions (or in-actions).

Randy,

I started to post this this morning, then thought better of it, and now re-reconsidered. If my fellow moderators think it to be too charged, well, I understand.

I fear we may have a culture clash at work here. There have been a lot of companies and countries who have been trying to get the Chinese government to curb fake goods. Then, we have gluten with poisonous additives. Now, antifreeze in toothpaste. It appears to me that, while their economic engine is running in overdrive, the ethical/regulatory engine has thrown a rod.

I hope I am wrong.

Randy,

I started to post this this morning, then thought better of it, and now re-reconsidered. If my fellow moderators think it to be too charged, well, I understand.

I fear we may have a culture clash at work here. There have been a lot of companies and countries who have been trying to get the Chinese government to curb fake goods. Then, we have gluten with poisonous additives. Now, antifreeze in toothpaste. It appears to me that, while their economic engine is running in overdrive, the ethical/regulatory engine has thrown a rod.

I hope I am wrong.

Crap! Now there's something else for me to worry about.

There are definitely some culture issues that have to be considered.

From my personal contact with people from the PRC I've found them honest, intelligent and wanting to do the right thing.

China is struggling to adapt from where they've been to where they want to be and we're just seeing undesirable outputs from that process.

That's my opinion anyway.

I agree with Randy.

Arguably our controls have resulted over many years following the West's Industrial Revolution. We patch holes, argue in the Supreme Courts and make changes to adapt to market forces bit by bit over a long period.

PRC and other developing countries are undergoing their own Industrial Revolutions, only in an accelerated pace. We get to (sometimes painfully) watch and participate in the market forces that economists tell us are more "efficient" to correcting behavior than regulation.

Certainly a mass recall of products can drive the point home (that manufacturers should control their product safety as well as ingredients via suppliers) but human nature is influenced by both intrisic forces (ethics) and extrinsic forces (consequences).

To address the problem in any permanent sense, I believe both economic (like boycotts) and personal impacts (like jail time) will need to be included. Boycotts are challenging when a quick supplier change is difficult, and laws are subject to variation among countries.

We can wring our hands about ethics and demand jail for fraudsters, but the most immediate and direct impact we individuals can have is our decision of what brand to buy. I, for my part have switched pet food brands to Blue Seal.

There are definitely some culture issues that have to be considered.

From my personal contact with people from the PRC I've found them honest, intelligent and wanting to do the right thing.

China is struggling to adapt from where they've been to where they want to be and we're just seeing undesirable outputs from that process.

That's my opinion anyway.

Like I said, I hope I am wrong. But, I did see an article where a Chinese business was trying to defend the presence of ethylene glycol in the toothpaste as being OK at low levels. I guess low levels of arsenic would be OK in my cereal, but I would not knowingly consume it.

What you have said about "growing pains" and the Chinese people are by and large true, I believe. I hope that they are as quick on the uptake in these areas as they have been on building their economy. I would love to see that firsthand some day. Maybe these issues happening so closely together will get them to see that in the long run there will be major damage if these issues are not addressed.

I guess low levels of arsenic would be OK in my cereal, but I would not knowingly consume it.




What do you think has been used as a whitening agent in some cigarette paper?

What do you think has been used as a whitening agent in some cigarette paper?Holy krap, Batman. Our nicotine delivery agent is contaminated with arsenic...just when you thought that you could smoke a healthy cigarette....http://www.ugoplayer.com//forum/images/smilies/smoke.gif

This whole debacle shows how critical standardization and conformity assessment are in the context of a global supply chain and free trade.