Clarcon products
Clarcon products have hit the news today as US Marshals entered the production facility of Clarcon Labs and confiscated all of their stock, ingredients and components. Quite why the FDA decided to send in hte US Marshals to do this to Clarcon and their products rather escapes analysis.
My colleague has the details on the Clarcon products and what was wrong with them and what you should do with them if you should happen to have any in the house.
However, the larger question is just why have the FDA sent in the federal Marshals to make this confiscation of Clarcon’s products?
The background is that the FDA found bacterial infections in some samples of Clarcon’s products. Clarcon, rightly (not that they had much choice in the matter) agreed to recall all of their products from the retail and wholesale chain. These recalled Clarcon products, along with their various ingredients to make the next batches, work in progress and so on, were all seized by the Marshals.
But that is the part of the story that doesn’t make much sense. The FDA’s justification is that the seizure was done to ensure that the Clarcon products did not enter the retail chain and thus endanger the public. OK, but as Clarcon had recalled all these products, clearly and obviously, they weren’t going to reenter that retail chain. So why seize them so as to destroy them?
Most especially, why destroy all of the recalled products when no one, not the FDA, not Clarcon and certainly not anyone else, know how many of them were in fact infected, infected with what to what levels of infection nor why they were?
Did Clarcon have a basic problem in the very formulation of their products? An error or mistake in their manufacturing process? Contamination of a batch by mistake? Contamination in the retail chain? Even, heaven forfend, was the contamination in the FDA’s own testing labs (believe this reporter, stranger things have happened in the past).
If all of Clarcon’s products are destroyed, as the FDA insists, then these questions can never be answered. Far be it for anyone to start conspiracy theories, but there does have to be at least some consideration given to the idea that the FDA would rather not find out these answers, thus the insistence on the destruction.
