China says Panamanian merchants responsible for deadly cough medicine

China has blamed Panamanian traders for falsifying documents on a Chinese chemical product that resulted in the deaths of dozens of Panamanian people who ingested tainted cough syrup.

"The Panamanian merchants are mainly responsible because they changed the scope of use and shelf-life of this product," said Wei Chuanzhong, Vice Minister of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine.

The product, "TD glycerin", an industrial solvent, was made by a factory in Taixing in eastern China's Jiangsu province, and sold by state-owned Beijing distributor CNSC Fortune Way to Spanish firm Rasfer in 2003.

Investigations showed that the Taixing factory used a misleading product name, "TD glycerin", which was easily misinterpreted as glycerin, and failed to clearly indicate the product ingredients, which included toxic diethylene glycol.

The company also used the trade mark "Glicerine" which was also inappropriate.

"But the Chinese company confirmed with the Spanish company that the product could not be used in pharmaceuticals in China and that its shelf-life was one year," said Wei.

According to evidence provided by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and a Panamanian government statement, Panamanian merchants bought the products from the Spanish company and changed the product name to "pure glycerin", which is allowed to be used in pharmaceuticals in the United States. They also altered its shelf-life to four years.

"When the falsified products were used by pharmaceutical companies in Panama, they were already two years beyond their use-by date," said Wei.

The Chinese government sent investigators on May 10 and 23 to the factory in Taixing city which produced "TD glycerin" to trace production and sales records.

Meanwhile, the team investigated CNSC Fortune Way, which was involved in exporting the product.

Last year dozens of Panamanians died after taking cough medicine which were contaminated by diethylene glycol used in place of the similar but more expensive safe compound frequently found in medicines, glycerin.

Foreign media reported that a Chinese company was accused of making and selling a fake drug ingredient that led to the incident.

Wei also said the alleged toxic toothpaste imported from China to Panama met safety standards.

He said the two brands of toothpaste, "Mr. Cool" and "Excel", were exported from the legally registered Danyang Chengshi Household Chemical Co. in Jiangsu Province.

"The company indicated the presence of the component diethylene glycol on the packaging as required by the foreign trade agency and delivered the products as the contract," said Wei.

In 2000, Chinese experts claimed after carrying out tests on 1,965 people that toothpaste containing less than 15.6 percent of diethylene glycol was harmless for humans.

So far there have been no reports of people being poisoned by toothpaste containing diethylene glycol, said Wei.

He said the Chinese government would strengthen supervision of the diethylene glycol content of toothpaste to fully protect consumers.

"We will set a limit on the use of diethylene glycol in toothpaste, and establish a supervision system for toothpaste production and marketing," said Wei.

About 50 tubes of Chinese toothpaste labeled "Excel" and "Mr. Cool" were seized from a store in Panama city in mid May, and experts confirmed after tests that the toothpaste contained about a 2.5-percent level of diethylene glycol.

Although the country's Health Ministry General Secretary Francisco Sucre said the levels were harmless, the ministry urged consumers not to use the products.

The Chinese government immediately called together directors of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, State Food and Drug Administration and China Customs to form an investigation team.

The safety of Chinese food and drug products has been in the news lately. Former director of China's State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) Zheng Xiaoyu, was sentenced to death by a Beijing court on Tuesday for taking bribes worth more than 6.49 million yuan (about 850,000 U.S. dollars) and dereliction of duty.

The consequences of Zheng's dereliction of duty have proved extremely serious. Six types of medicine approved by the administration during that period were fake. Some pharmaceutical companies used false documents to apply for approvals, the court said.

But the vast majority of China's food and drug exports were safe, said Li Yuanping, an official in charge of food import and export safety.

"Over the past two years, the acceptance rate of China's food exports to the United States has hovered around 99 percent, slightly higher than that of U.S. food exports to China," said Li.

He said the Chinese government has established a supervision system which tracks food exports from farm to port.

Source: Xinhua