New regulations to protect consumers

Under the regulation, FDA officials will inspect the factory before an FDA registration number could be issued for its cosmetic products – which were normally considered low-risk as they are for external use – FDA secretary-general Dr Wanchai Satayawutthipong said yesterday. 
This was an extra step to the existing requirement – the submission of the cosmetic product’s formula, ingredients and the factory address – required for an FDA hallmark application.
The factory inspection is already a requirement for an FDA hallmark application for a food supplement. 
In future, a list of FDA-approved factories would be drawn up and health products could be manufactured at these registered places only, he said.
The authority will also address the forging of the FDA hallmark – which, along with the FDA-approved registration number, is what consumers look for to ensure a product’s safety. Wanchai said the logo would be modified to make it more difficult to fake. 
Celebrities providing “product review” advertisements for a cosmetic product or food supplement would be liable for a jail term – not just a fine – if the product is found to have caused a users’ death, he said. The FDA would also ask the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission to scrap inappropriate product advertisements.
In future, the FDA would blacklist those people who applied for FDA approval but their product quality or safety was deemed substandard, illegal or not as claimed. This would avoid repeat offences, he said. Currently the FDA can just prohibit the use of a product formula, not a person.
More than 700,000 cosmetic products and 30,000 food supplement products have been registered with the Thai FDA.