With 80% of oral medicines containing animal by-products banned by theEuropean Union as of January 1, 1998 (Marketletters passim), US health officials say the policy will threaten domestic, as well as overseas supplies. If the ban is not amended, the change of ingredients is such that there would be shortages everywhere, said Sharon Smith Holston, Food and Drug Administration deputy commissioner.
Almost all pills/capsules now contain tallow made from animal bones, and to comply with the ban, firms would need to find suppliers who produced it from animals specially slaughtered. While drugmakers contend that transmissible spongiform encephalopathies have never been found in tallow or gelatin, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America said that in a worst-case estimate, there would be a one-in-a-billion risk.
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