European and American companies choose China Pharmaceutical Factory

Consumers want to buy cheap products. China now produces aspirin, which accounts for two-thirds of the world's total, and will become the world’s only global supplier in the near future. But are these Chinese factories safe? The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the European Union Drug Administration, and other regulatory agencies rarely check them. Companies importing Chinese pharmaceutical ingredients are required to test them before use. These companies also sent private inspectors to China to ensure that suppliers manage properly. But some industry executives say that the price sensitivity of the pharmaceutical industry makes it increasingly difficult to thoroughly test low-cost suppliers.

There are thousands of pharmaceutical factories in China and the profit rate is very low. Due to concerns about the quality of Chinese medicines, the US Department of Health announced three weeks ago that the FDA will open an office in Beijing by the end of this year and plans to send inspectors from the United States to China for inspection.

The FDA oversees more than $1 trillion in consumer products, including $275 billion in medicines, but the Bureau has fewer than 500 import inspectors and an obsolete computer system. For the past six years, the FDA can only examine 15 of the 714 Chinese pharmaceutical factories that export products to the United States each year. At the current rate, it will take another 50 years for the bureau to fully test the factories.

In addition, employees who perform overseas inspections are not willing to go to Asia. Edwards, an inspector who worked at the FDA for 14 years, recalled: “I once visited Taiwan. I stayed in a good hotel on the first night and later transferred to another hotel closer to the pharmaceutical factory...I was there. Only stayed for one night and would never want to stay there again."

In addition, the translation of the names of Chinese pharmaceutical companies also made FDA inspections difficult. The names of Chinese pharmaceutical companies are usually very similar and translation methods are not the same. The FDA's computer system is so backward that it is difficult for inspectors and officials to distinguish between them.

Even regular inspections of Chinese pharmaceutical plants do not necessarily guarantee safety. Inspectors may be blinded, and testing may also be false. Senator Brown of Ohio said: "No matter how many FDA inspectors, as long as there are still pressures to cut costs, security cannot be guaranteed."

In fact, cheap medicines from countries such as China and India have saved many lives. Without these pharmaceutical factories in China and India, millions of lives in the world will face threats. In the United States, buying drugs produced overseas has also become one of the ways to reduce medical expenses. Some Members have put forward extreme opinions to prohibit the import of all medicines from China. However, China has become an important supplier to the US pharmaceutical market. Such a ban will lead to the collapse of the US healthcare system. And our level of reliance has intensified. When PricewaterhouseCoopers mentioned in the October report that the best pharmaceutical industry in the world was outsourced, its choice was: China.