Pan Pharmaceutical Ltd - A disgraceful, substandard Australian company

Pan Pharmaceutical, the company that caused the biggest medical recall in Australian history and had its licence suspended for 6 months by the medical watchdog, Therapeutical Goods Administration (TGA). Its CEO forced to resign.

TGA has released a new list of recalled Pan products. Click here to see the latest list of recall products by TGA as of 5 pm on 4th May 2003.

This list is additional to previous lists found on the TGA website of product recalls

With the new list of another 300 recalls, it now stands at 1,700 products associated with Pan have been cancelled or recalled.

Allegations of substandard practices

Now, workers and former employees of the firm have spoken out alleging substandard work ethics in the manufacturing of its products sold worldwide. Sydney Morning Herald reports:

A former Pan analytical chemist,who had worked on the company's tablet production machines during the 1990s, told the Nine Network's Sunday program:

• Workers swept pill-making powder off the floor and into mixing machines.
  
  
• The environment at Pan was neither sterile nor controlled.
  
  
• Workers walked through powder that had fallen on the floor on the way to and from the toilet. The powder was then swept off the floor and dumped into machines.
  
  
• The company ran two different production lines next to each other, risking cross-contamination.
  
  
• He witnessed improper machine cleaning practises. Another former Pan employee, Richard Obedoza, also told the same TV news and current affairs program that workers were under so much pressure to produce pills that they did not have enough time to clean machinery properly."We have to make five million pills a day but we can't make that ... if we clean the machine properly," Mr Obedoza said.

According to the chemist: "They have a manual scooping system in those days and the powder ... was flying everywhere. I have worked with many pharmaceutical industries and I haven't seen these sort of practices at any other pharmaceutical company I have worked for. The company was involved in serious breaches of good manufacturing practice."

He said he reported the breaches to authorities at the time. An investigation by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA). was promised but it never occurred.

But TGA's principal medical adviser, John McEwen, said he was never aware of the complaint. Dr McEwen also said the TGA had never made any surprise audit on Pan despite the company being given notice of three audits.

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