Europe-PH News

MANILA -- The Philippine Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Tuesday expressed concern about the growing number of counterfeit and unregistered products sold online, particularly medicines.

At a forum organized by the European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines, FDA Director General Paolo Teston said he is considering requiring e-commerce sites to post a market authorization form on the online account to show that the products sold, particularly some medicines, food, and skincare items, are registered with the FDA.

“Require these platforms to at least present a valid market authorization form from the Philippine Food and Drug Administration. I’m just threading carefully because I don’t want to be tagged as anti-trade,” he said.

Teston, however, said they are still reviewing this proposal to see how this will work and how this would be done properly.

“Real challenge there is the implementation. We can impose a requirement but the question is will the platform require it from the peddlers especially if they’re getting a lot of traction for the marketing of the product,” he added.

Teston said they constantly contact e-commerce platforms about various illegal products sold online.

“We have weekly takedowns. We write these platforms- Meta, we write Tiktok, we write Lazada, even the Carousel.ph. We write Shein, Shopee, Lazada etc,” he stated.

But he added, “They take it down, the following day there’s another one.”

The FDA chief said the problem with unregistered products is that many are substandard and may pose health risks. He added that there has been an uptick recently in counterfeit rabies vaccines sold online.