Supplement company in Australia's largest medicines recall

The Australian natural health industry is set to suffer as the government warns people to avoid taking herbal and vitamin supplements. The move follows a major recall of herbal and nutritional supplements made by the country's leading contract manufacturer, thought to be the biggest medicines recall in the country's history.

The Commonwealth medicines watchdog the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has ordered an urgent recall of more than 200 products made by Pan Pharmaceuticals, citing a series of serious safety and quality breaches by the company. These included substitution of ingredients, manipulation of test results and substandard manufacturing processes. The regulator has also suspended Pan Pharmaceuticals' licence.

Federal parliamentary secretary for health Trish Worth said several thousand products may potentially be withdrawn following the six-month suspension of Pan Pharmaceutical's licence, according to a report in the West Australian​.

Pan Pharmaceuticals​ is Australia's largest contract manufacturer of complementary medicines such as herbal, vitamin, mineral and nutritional supplements, and represents 70 per cent of the Australian complementary pharmaceutical market according to media reports.

They also manufacture some over-the-counter (OTC) medicines although there have been no safety problems identified with prescription medicines supplied by the company, said the TGA.

The company has already been involved in a recall earlier this year, for an anti-travel sickness tablet (Travacalm) it makes for another company. Faulty batches of the tablets were responsible for 19 people being hospitalised and 68 others experiencing potentially life threatening adverse reactions to the OTC medicine.

The TGA​ said that tests had revealed serious deficiencies in the company's manufacturing and quality control procedures, including systematic and deliberate manipulation of quality control test data.