Want $50K? Snitch On Illegal Drugmaking In China

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            Want $50K? Snitch On Illegal Drugmaking In China         2 Comments               

By Ed Silverman // January 17th, 2013 // 9:59 am

        In a bid to crack down on a variety of troubling shenanigans, Chinese authorities are willing to pay the equivalent of roughly $48,000 to any one who blows the whistle on illegal pharmaceutical production. The move comes after several embarrassing and harmful episodes and amid growing concern that Chinese suppliers cannot be counted on to provide reliable ingredients or finished products.
The goal is “to encourage the public to report illegal activities so as to discover, control and eliminate potential safety risks concerning food and drug in time, and to crack down on illegal and criminal activities concerning food and drug,” according to a statement from the State Food and Drug Administration and the Ministry of Financial of China, which announced its so-called ‘Reward Measures’ (see this).
Whistleblowers could get up to 300,000 yuan, or about $48,244, per case as a reward. The new reward will replace one released in November 2003, which only set down conditions for rewarding those who report illegalities concerning medicine and fixed the award ceiling at 50,000 yuan, according to the Xinhua news agency. That is the equivalent of $8,000 at today’s rates.
Exceptions to the maximum reward could be made by national and provincial food and drug authorities in cases with nationwide influence. And “depending on the accuracy of information provided and intensity of a whistleblower’s engagement in the investigation of relevant cases, the organization or individual behind a tipoff could receive 1 percent to 6 percent of the value” of the medicine involved as a reward,” Xinhua writes.
The Chinese government is under pressure to bolster oversight after a spate of scandals. Last October, a subsidiary of the Joincare Pharmaceutical Group reportedly used reprocessed cooking oil – otherwise known as ‘gutter’ oil – to make a widely used antibiotic in China. The term gutter oil refers to reprocessed oil made from kitchen waste dredged from gutters behind restaurants (back story).
Last June, the SFDA considered blacklisting some pharmaceutical manufacturers after conducting a month-long probe and finding that 254 pharmaceutical companies, or 12.7 percent of all capsule makers, turned out capsules containing unsafe levels of chromium. The investigation, however, was begun only after local media uncovered the problem (back story).
And of course, there was the heparin scandal in which a pair of so-called workshops in China that allegedly sold tainted supplies led to more than 80 deaths in the US back in 2007 and 2008. The episode prompted an outcry and, under pressure from Congress, led the US FDA to step up its own oversight of Chinese suppliers. The agency has, for instance, since added personnel there (back story).
Hat tip to InpharmaTechnologist