The Chinese government has announced changes in the way toothpaste is regulated. Interestingly, these changes have been in the works well before the counterfeit Colgate toothpaste scare:

China's health ministry is formulating new standards and regulations to standardize the toothpaste industry, according to information from a recent oral health seminar, Chinanews.com.cn reported today.

The Ministry of Health has drafted evaluation criteria for oral healthcare products and submitted them to the ministry's standardization committee for examination, meaning toothpastes will have regulations to abide by in the future, according to Mao Qunan, the ministry's spokesman.

Tong Yu, chairman of Jiangsu Snow Leopard Household Chemical Co Ltd, a toothpaste producer, said the new certification standards will improve the overall quality of China's toothpaste industry.

An insider said that the recent toothpaste-related scandal was due to the nation's lacking toothpaste safety measures and certification standards. Toothpastes have caused widespread health concerns in recent years.

Earlier in June, the US Food and Drug Administration warned consumers of risks in using some made-in-China toothpastes because they may contain a poisonous chemical used in antifreeze.

The National Committee for Oral Health, an organization that certified oral healthcare products but was never officially registered with the Certification and Accreditation Administration and was not qualified to approve products, was recently abolished.

The NCOH was created by China's Ministry of Health to promote dental hygiene, but became well known as an organization that certified products in exchange for cash. In April, the NCOH was scrapped for alleged financial improprieties, as well as for issuing certifications which was beyond its mandate. Conveniently, an audit on NCOH activities was released only three weeks ago:

An audit report released by the Ministry of Health yesterday records several cases of financial misconduct involving the National Committee for Oral Health (NCOH).

The report revealed that the NCOH, a small but "clever" advisory body that was dismantled in April after its operations came under public scrutiny, made unauthorized endorsements worth about 2.09 million yuan (US$273,000) between 1997 and 2006.

The report also found, without naming any names, that the committee's "primary responsible party" had illegally claimed about 74,200 yuan as a housing subsidy and 46,000 yuan as a duty allowance during one two-year period.

The NCOH has been at the center of several financial scandals, including one involving an unlawful 500,000 yuan loan to a Guangdong-based toothbrush producer in 1994. The loan was not recovered in time, resulting in a loss of 154,000 yuan, the report said.

Apparently, Western pharmaceutical companies played the game:

In the former case, Proctor & Gamble (P&G China), the makers of the toothpaste brand, allegedly donated 10 million yuan to the China Oral Health Foundation, whose secretary-general was also deputy chief of the NCOH, in 2002.

How did the NCOH scam work?

When it endorsed a product, the NCOH would ask the company to "donate" to an oral-health foundation under its control. The foundation is reported to have received large donations from manufacturers of oral-health products. The biggest donation, 10 million yuan (1.25 million U.S. dollars), was from the P&G Group. The NCOH also signed a contract with a domestic producer, Snow Leopard Household Chemical Co, according to which the company had to donate 100,000 yuan (13,500 U.S. dollars) to the foundation each year for NCOH certification of its products.

However, according to NCOH vice president Zhang Boxue, the practice is "neither illegal nor a power-for-money deal, but rather a practice that reflects 'Chinese characteristics'," he was quoted by the Southern Metropolis News as saying.

Zhang said money donated to the NCOH and its foundation was used for oral-health promotion and that he himself barely received a penny from the foundation under his management.

However, the investigation carried out by the MOH revealed that half of the organization's income was spent on operational costs and salaries and benefits for its six full-time staff members. Zhang was found to have drawn some 100,000 yuan (13,500 U.S. dollars) as a housing allowance from the foundation over a period of 18 months from June 2003 without proper permission.

Does this mean the counterfeit Colgate tubes will never be seen in a Guelph store again? Not likely, because the NCOH did not play an obvious role in what happened. The tube labeled as from South Africa, assuming it came from China, did not bear the logo of the NCOH. Given that the counterfeit was destined for foreign markets, the NCOH stamp of approval would not have meant much, and would even have raised eyebrows.

Still, the good news is that China is working on the problem. The bad news is that as in any dictatorship, the authorities will decide when enough has been done, and that decision will never be submitted to the electorate to be judged.

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