Did You Know… A Number of Common Nutritional Supplements Have Recently Been Recalled?

On April 4, 2011, the FDA launched a new website which allows consumers to more quickly search for recalls of food, drugs and other products. One thing that is useful about this new tool: it allows consumers to easily be able to see in one quick form the number of pharmaceutical products (and a wide range of other types of items that have been recalled) from any computer with Internet access.

Some of the recalled items in the food and drugs category come as no surprise — but some consumers would be surprised to see some common nutritional supplements have been recently recalled. For instance, Biotab Neutraceuticals in February had to recall two lots of its EXTENZE supplement tablets, becausee these lots included counterfeit knock-off products that contained undeclared drug ingredients. More specifically, lot 0709241 of the supplement contains tadalafil and sildenafil, and lot 0509075 contains tadalafil and sibutramine, which can be dangerous to consumers’ health. The new FDA web site states that "(a)ny adverse reactions or quality problems experienced with the use of any counterfeit products may be reported to the FDA’s MedWatch Adverse Event Reporting program either online, by regular mail or by fax."

The new website was mandated by the Food Safety Modernization Act (FMSA) signed into law by President Obama on January 4,2011. The goal of the law and the new website is to prevent the 48 million cases of foodborne illnesses that affect Americans each year.

This new site can be found at : http://www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/default.htm

(c) Copyright 2011 Brett A. Emison