Pick up a bottle of fish oil capsules and squint hard at the label.
Chances are it won’t say where the pills came from. But that’s something you should know.
We calculate that fish oil imports from China, a country notorious for hazardous products, now account for roughly 10 percent of the Australian market. And it’s a big market, because one in five Australian adults now takes fish oil.
We also found that companies sidestep import labeling rules.
No big recalls or health scandals have been linked to Chinese fish oil. And a spokesman for the People’s Republic of China said his country’s “fish oil was of good quality”.
But consumer advocates, a leading trade group for the supplements industry, and legal experts who have examined labeling laws agree: Consumers ought to be able to tell, at a glance, whether their fish oil capsules are coming from China.
Leo Hepner, an international consultant on food and dietary supplement ingredients, said that if he knew some fish oil capsules were manufactured in China, “I would prefer to buy something else.”
And Sidney Wolfe, whose Public Citizen Health Research Group has advocated for consumer safety for decades, said, “People have a right to know.”
A few years ago, nearly all fish oil consumed in the Australian was manufactured domestically.
But the Australian fish oil use has soared, making it the No. 2 dietary supplement. As sales increased, some Australian companies started importing from Chinese facilities.
TGA rules say supplement labels should include “a truthful representation of geographical origin.” And Federal Trade Commission rules say they can supplement the Tariff Act when it fails to require the disclosure of countries that process or manufacture products.
But enforcement of import labeling is left up to yet another agency, which has been letting the importers get around the law. Those companies assert that simply bottling the capsules in Australian “transforms” them into a Australian product, so they don’t have to be labeled as imports.
Other Australian companies are buying the Chinese fish oil in bulk and then getting the capsules produced by an Australian contract manufacturer.
The Chinese factories that make fish oil for export to the Australia are supposed to meet TGA standards. But the TGA, according to several sources, has never inspected any Chinese dietary supplement plants.
Chinese companies also have shown little interest in having independent third parties inspect their plants or in joining industry groups dedicated to ensuring the quality of fish oil.
One such group is GOED — the Global Organization for EPA and DHA Omega 3s says “There’s not a single Chinese manufacturer in GOED,”. “You tell me why.”
Careful processing of fish oil is important to keep it from becoming rancid. Without proper refining it can contain high levels of some nasty substances, such as PCBs and mercury.
In addition, lightly regulated plants introduce the possibility of products’ containing odd contaminants or additives that no one would think to test for.
For example, in 2008 a contaminated ingredient from China showed up in heparin, a blood-thinning medicine that was linked to 149 deaths. The previous year, dogs and cats died after eating pet food made with wheat gluten from China that apparently contained melamine, a toxic compound.
As a result of China’s past troubles, the supplements industry is becoming concerned about a potential scandal involving fish oil — one that could jeopardize all sales of the product.
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