ASMI announces its Committee of Management
16 January 2015 – The Australian Self Medication Industry (ASMI) today announced its Committee of Management for 2015.
ASMI Executive Director, Dr Deon Schoombie, welcomed members to the Committee of Management.
“We have a very talented and strong Committee of Management who will be driving an ambitious advocacy program in 2015. I’m greatly looking forward to working with them in the year ahead.”
The 2015 Committee of Management includes:
* Mark Sargent, ASMI President; General Manager Consumer Care Australia & New Zealand, Bayer Australia Limited
* Violeta Delgado, ASMI Vice President (Treasurer); Head of ANZ at Novartis Consumer Health
* Paul Rose, ASMI Vice President (Secretary); General Manager ANZ at Pfizer Consumer Healthcare
* Robert Barnes, Head of Consumer OTC Division, Aspen Pharmacare Australia
* Brett Charlton, Director Consumer Healthcare, Sanofi Consumer Health
* Vincent Cotard, Vice President/General Manager, GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare
* Gaurav Jain, Regional Director ANZ, Reckitt Benckiser
* James Jones, Commercial Country Manager, Takeda Pharmaceuticals Australia
* Phil Lynch, Managing Director, Australia/New Zealand, Johnson & Johnson Pacific
* Alan Oppenheim, Managing Director, Ego Pharmaceuticals.
Fish Oil products are highly regulated in Australia
22 January 2015 – The Australian Self Medication Industry (ASMI) today said that fish oil products are highly regulated in Australia and Australian consumers can be confident that fish oil products contain the ingredients listed on the label.
This was in response to a New Zealand study, which evaluated the quality and content of fish oil supplements on sale in New Zealand, and found that many didn’t contain quantities of fish oil that were equal or higher than the labelled content. 1
Steve Scarff, ASMI Director of Regulatory and Scientific Affairs, said: It’s important to note that this was a New Zealand, not an Australian study.
In fact, two recent studies of fish oil products available in Australia, one of them conducted by the CSIRO, actually found close agreement between the ingredients listed on the label of the products they tested and the actual composition of those products. 2,3
“The composition of fish oil products is regulated by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) and they are required to contain at least 90% of the declared label content.
“Companies that market fish oil products in Australia must comply with the TGA requirements.
“The Australian regulations for complementary medicines are some of the toughest in the world and the TGA undertakes routine testing to monitor compliance,” he added.
References
1. Albert, B et al. Fish oil supplements in New Zealand are highly oxidized and do not meet label content of n-3 PUFA. Scientific Reports, 6/1/15.
2. Hamilton, K. et al. Evaluation of the composition of omega-3 fatty acids in dietary oil supplements. Nutrition and Dietetics, 67: 182-189. 2010.2
3. Nichols, P. et al. Readily available sources of long-chain omega-3 oils: Is Farmed Australian Seafood a better source of the good oil than wild-caught seafood. Nutrients, 6, 1063-1079. 2014.