On April 30, Johnson & Johnson announced it was recalling 43 of its OTC medications. During a recent FDA inspection, the agency found significant deficiencies in J&J’s manufacturing processes resulting in purity, potency and quality problems with a large number of J&J’s OTC products on the market.
The manufacturing deficiencies described by the FDA seem to have existed for some time. It seems possible that the problems have existed since the last J&J recall of products dating back to January (see more in A Tale of Two Recalls). This makes me wonder if J&J ever took corrective action from the last round of product recalls.
Personally, I want to congratulate Johnson & Johnson on doing a much better job of handling this situation. The last time J&J had this problem, details emerged in 2008, the company waited over a year to notify the FDA (December 2009) and then waited again until January 2010 to tell consumers. However, in this case, J&J waited only two weeks to notify consumers! This is a very positive development for J&J and I want to congratulate them on this!
Consumers can get more information at the McNeil Consumer Healthcare Product Recall Information website.
