Tainted Spirulina Investigation

China is stirred with spirulina investigation by government and media. Early this year, many doubts rose from media and public on spirulina products in the market, concerning if these products contained lead, arsenic, and mercury. The concerns were directed at some very famous brands in China, such as Byhealth and Green A.

State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) conducted a special investigation into the spirulina products in February, and released its official report on its website on March 30. This report claimed that they investigated 13 brands of spirulina products, and three of them are fake products (from Conice, Onice, and Hongyangshen), and one product from Cont-healthy had high-levels of heavy metals. Among them, Conice and Cont-healthy were advertised as US brands, and Onice from Australia.

The other spirulina products including those from Green A, By-health, Jinaoli, Chenghai Lake, Green Classic, B&H, Shengaolikang, Gaozhi, and Shiruian, were claimed to be within national limit, i.e. 2.0mg lead in 1kg of product, which was said to be the standard for health products mainly based on algae.

However, that was not what the media expected to see. On February 29, it was reported in an internal SFDA notice to state and provincial levels that all the named 13 products failed to meet China’s standards and thus were classified as adulterated. However, when SFDA released its final report on March 30, many were shocked to see that nine of the companies that failed were now considered up to standards. This followed by rumors of corruption and finger pointing.

Many speculated that prior to March 30, these nine companies most likely visited SFDA, and persuaded them to revise their findings. Some doubted that the independent testing center was fair and objective in conducting their tests and that SFDA played too much of an influencing factor. Everyone questioned why the final results landed where they did.

The Economy Reference, a local newspaper within Xinhua national news agency group, also reported that on March 5, another notice inside SFDA system on fish oil products stated that eight products were disqualified, however when it was officially released on its website on March 30, there were only three left and all of them were titled as fake products. They were Ruideli fish oil capsule, Amway fish oil capsule, and Olilailuomai fish oil soft capsule. The Economy Reference asked, “Where are the results for the rest of products?”

The national standard regulation that should be followed is the General Standards for Health/Function Food, issued by the former State Bureau of Technical Supervision in 1997. It says, for general products, the lead limit should below 0.5mg/kg; for general capsules, 1.5 mg/kg; for the drink powder and capsules based on algae, 2.0mg/kg.

“How about the spirulina tablet?”The Beijing News asked in its report. There is no clear standard for the tablet so far.“If we use 0.5mg/kg as the national limit, Green A and Jinaoli spirulina tablets were tested to contain 0.9mg/kg lead, which is 80% over the standard, By-health which contains 1.0mg/kg exceeds the standard for 100%,” the report explained.

SFDA can hardly keep silent in this wave of media probing. On April 10, they released a statement in reference to the results of the spirulina products they made days ago, arguing that the 2.0mg/kg as lead maximum limits for spirulina tablets was approved by many industrial experts, who view the tablet as the same dose as drink powder. They also quoted that the EU uses 3.0mg/kg as the standard for their dietary supplements.

“But, just one month ago, officials from SFDA told reporters that they used 0.5mg/kg as the standard,” the Economy Reference said in its report, which also pointed out that many spirulina manufacturers and some provincial food and drug administration departments understood they should be following the 0.5mg/kg standard.

Tong Min, Director of Health Product and Cosmetics Department of SFDA, said in an interview with The Economy Reference that, “Once a problem comes, the first responsible person is the enterprise itself, the second, local supervision department, and the third is SFDA.” Another anonymous industrial person remarked in the report that,“SFDA can easily push aside its responsibility to local level, or they can fudge the results of reports which can put-off its supervision responsibility and at same time ensure the involved enterprise no-harm.”

The report questioned that “If all the steps and power, including regulation establishment, administrative licensing, approval, market supervision, testing, penalty and sanction, are all in SFDA’s hand, how can there be transparency and efficient regulation in China?”

Wang Lianglan, the spokesperson of SFDA stated on April 11 that SFDA would study the related report from media and promised to be more open and transparent in the future work.

However, the public credibility of SFDA has already been questioned. Some discussion on the internet asked a third testing party to redo the investigation and release an authorized report to get to the bottom of the situation.