FDA on padlocked Tarlac clinic: Rules are rules

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has assailed the pressure being exerted on the agency through social media allegedly by a Tarlac-based clinic that it had ordered closed for selling unregistered health products.

In a statement, the FDA assured licensed manufacturers the agency would stand by the principle that “rules are rules.”

The agency’s director general, Nela Charade Puno, has been bashed online following the raid on the Tarlac clinic, where nearly P1 million worth of unregistered herbal products were seized.

The clinic sold the products, which lacked a Certificate of Product Registration, and claimed that these have cancer-healing properties.

‘No jurisdiction’

The clinic is owned by a a certain Dr. Farrah Bunch, who has said that the FDA had “no jurisdiction” over her or her clinic.

But Puno said the FDA had jurisdiction over makers and sellers of pharmaceutical products, including herbals, under Republic Act No. 9711.

Bunch is said to have prepared an online petition against the FDA move with at least 3,000 signatures.

“The only signatures that matter are those of FDA officials who would certify that a product has gone through testing and is safe, effective and has the quality it claims to have,” the FDA said.

RA No. 9711 prohibits the sale of any health product that is “adulterated, unregistered or misbranded.”