China-made vitamins C, A, B12, E, penicillin, aspirin, Tylenol.

China-made drugs under scrutiny
By Tim Johnson - McClatchy Beijing Bureau
Last Updated 5:06 am PDT Friday, June 1, 2007

An ad for vitamin C in Shijiazhuang, China,
where most of the U.S. supply is produced.


SHIJIAZHUANG, China -- If you pop a vitamin C tablet into your mouth, it's a good bet it came from China. Indeed, many of the world's vitamins are now made in China.

In less than a decade, China has captured 90 percent of the U.S. market for vitamin C, driving almost everyone else out of business.

Chinese pharmaceutical companies also have taken over much of the world market in the production of antibiotics, analgesics, enzymes and primary amino acids. According to an industry group, China makes 70 percent of the world's penicillin, 50 percent of its aspirin and 35 percent of its acetaminophen (often sold under the brand name Tylenol), as well as the bulk of vitamins A, B12 and E.

In the wake of a pet food scandal, in which adulterated wheat flour from China led to the deaths of thousands of pets in North America, and other instances of food and toothpaste tampering, China's vitamin producers are reaching out to reassure U.S. consumers that their vitamins are safe. ...

"The industry in China is bifurcated between top-notch companies that are highly skilled and do all the right things, and the second- and third-tier producers, some of which are just sloppy bucket shops," said Peter Kovacs, a food industry consultant based in Incline Village, Nev.

Foreign brokers agree that the low end of China's market has severe problems. "Sometimes you enter a factory, and you say, 'I can't believe they produce food here.' It's dirty and the machines are old," said Jan Willem Roben of Vision Ingredients in Shanghai, a broker of food additives for export.

Since U.S. laws don't require food and drug sellers to label products with the country of origin of ingredients, it's impossible for consumers to know where food or supplements come from, not to mention what factory produced them. ...

http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/201677.html

verified quality at all, from anyone, anywhere?

tries to get vitamins and supplements "verified" by the FDA, we get dozens of angry people bitching that the government is trying to outlaw their valerian root.

They can't have it both ways - you can't object to FDA regulation, but expect "verified" high quality vitamins.

our penicillin or Tylenol comes from.

We need labeling not regulation and withholding access to vitamins and supplements.

we need regulation.

I'll never understand how people can demand that the FDA better-regulate pet food, but object to similar regulation on supplements and vitamins.

They are not the same thing.

Why? So what if I want to take a multi vitamin, or calcium supplements? You think I need a prescription for that? :wtf:

companies need to state the origin of their products would do it.

I gotta say, I don't go out of my way to buy Chinese crap lately. That pet food business was pretty ugly.

is more important than ensuring that the pills actually contain what they say they contain, in the dosage stated?

by "bait and switch" and rank profiteering that is downright life-threatening before you start suspecting the ability of the country in question to give you something other than a slipshod product?? This isn't China-bashing, it's common sense.

It's all very well and good to cry "discrimination" when the party being discriminated against has done nothing wrong. But when you apply the actual meaning of the word, and not the racist definition that has taken hold over the years, it's only intelligent to "discriminate"--to make a decision, based on simple facts (these guys sell dog and cat fur as rabbit fur, they put poison in everything from pet food to toothpaste to Christ knows what else to increase profit without regard for human safety, their manufacturing standards are all over the page, their reputation for quality SUCKS...and so forth) that these guys, taken as a group, are NOT reliable businessmen across the board. All things being equal, to include price, from whom would you rather purchase a good: Japan, or China? Switzerland, or China? I'd pick Japan or Switzerland, hands down--because they have a much better reputation for QUALITY. Hell, if it came to a choice between the PRC and Taiwan, I'd pick Taiwan, because they don't seem to have these wide swings in quality, that cannot be verified by any reliable agency. It's not 'racism' at play here, it's the inability (or lack of desire) of a GOVERNMENT to get a handle on shoddy business practices.

this country seems to value making a profit above all. They don't seem to value life too much.

Yesterday, on the Thom Hartman show on AAR, I heard this horrific account of China's practice of organ harvesting.

Seems that there is big business for organs. Where China gets their organs from is from prisoners, usually either condemned to death or a follower of Falun Dong (a peaceful movement of exercises and life practices).

These poor prisoners will be killed to provide that organ.

I did a google search when I got to the computer and it seems to be true. However, with the privacy that China has, it is hard to prove, and of course, they deny it.

What kind of country will kill a prisoner to make a profit?

Add a poisonous additive to a toothpaste because it is cheaper?

I do not like how much of our products come from China and the fact that things aren't always labeled as such. I have a right to know where my products come from and I for one, would like to avoid buying products from China.

Add melamine to pet food to increase the protein count, as it is cheaper?

Well, maybe not WORSE--I have a hard time thinking of anything worse than killing someone for their organ, actually...

I kinda soured on MADE IN CHINA when I learned that they eat something like twenty million dogs a year. I knew this practice happened in many Asian countries, I just didn't realize what a big biz it was in China. It's big, huge, in fact, and getting bigger.

It's a delicacy over there, like lobster, mind you, so not EVERYONE eats it (I haven't had lobster in maybe ten years, and I'm a New Englander, mainly because I don't really like the taste of it), but enough people eat it that they've imported ST Bernards to mate with Chinese dogs to make these "big meat" two hundred pounders that maximize profit. And to make matters even worse, accusations of 'cultural imperialism' aside, they're killed by electrocution in a very painful way. http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/petition/bernard.htm And let's not even get into the "cat in the kettle" business...they simply have a different cultural take on eating domestic animals, and wild ones, too, and it's one I have difficulty with. For simply noting this, though, I've been excoriated on this very forum--I'm just one of those 'intolerant' folks who doesn't like seeing Fido being electrocuted for dinner, doncha know.

"U.S. laws don't require food and drug sellers to label products with the country of origin of ingredients."

We should demand that all food and drugs be labeled as to the country of origin - let the buyer choose if they do or do not want Chinese crap.

Congress is not serving us well on this issue. Our lives and the lives of our pets are in danger as we have recently witnessed.

There isn't any way in hell that they would put "Made in China" on anything of any profit margin.
You can live without a Chia Pet...you can't live without antibiotics.
Notice the one that has "Made in China" on it and which one does not?
Seems a little bizarre, eh?

Government of the corporation, by the corporation and for the corporation TOTALLY sucks.

subsidizing the pharma-terrorists and agribusiness (as usual).
Polar Bear

a toe in those waters would make a fucking bundle. Would you pay more for verified organic-origin products, to include vitamins and supplements, from a local family farm? I would. And I'm not rich. I'd probably only buy just what I needed, when I needed it, or put the items on my birthday/holiday 'wish list' so someone else would get it for me, but hey--quality beats quantity when it comes to stuff you ingest. IMO.

where their supplements are made. It better be here.

Sounds like the American middleman is getting rich.

I'm guessing Vitamin C is relatively normalized in the industry and hard to fake. That's really the only supplement I take in quantity.

Companies aren't interested in passing savings to consumers. Why didn't cost for services come down after most companies outsourced their customer service centres to India? Why are Nikes over $100.00? etc etc

at heart. It's all about profits baby.

But not vitamins. That's all I'm saying.

cheap doesn't receive the advertising dollars whereas vitamins are heavily marketed which boosts the demand.

as in "CEO"!

lots of stuff.

And... verifying that the contents and dosage are... well, what they claim (if they claim) is next to impossible.

I am especially bothered by this as I've recently started Vitamin C therapy in an attempt to control cholesterol. <<sigh>>

analytical chemists can tell you pretty much all about what's in a capsule.

However, companies do not like close scrutiny. And the FDA can only check so many products for so many things....

in other words, the only real difficulty is the "handing over the sample to the chemist" part.

So no, not impossible, with a little pressure for it to happen.

.... however, you're running out of science graduates. You've been importing them for years and years (known here as "the brain drain"), but really, there are limits.

as far as dosage, potency, but it is next to impossible to test for all the possible contaminants in the formulas.

A friend of mine who works for a vitamin company in Illinois has said that up until 2005 they refused any ingredients or final product made in China because the potency was well below that what they claimed, and they found many contaminants, almost nearly impossible to test the stuff for everything that could be the contaminant.

But since the end 2005 the company has had no choice other than to accept stuff from China because they control the market (this for Vit C, mainly, but she said it is growing for all the other vitamins too).

if it doesn't have what it claims, it gets its license revoked is the way it should be.

And yes, it is most difficult to test for all the possible contaminants.

on food and drugs. I for one would like to know which country they come from...... in particular drugs, since the pharm companies like to charge the US consumer about twice as much as anyone else.

required the regulation of vitamins and supplements so that they were verified to contain the products they claim to contain, in the dosage listed, AND no other dangerous ingredients, the country of origin would be irrelevant.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.