A panel looking into health problems linked to Kobayashi Pharmaceutical’s dietary supplements say factories producing the products were constantly short-handed and that quality control was mostly left to plant officials.
There have been many reports across Japan of people who took the firm’s supplements containing a “beni-koji” red yeast fermented rice ingredient developing kidney disease and other health problems, some fatal.
The Japanese pharmaceutical maker has been investigating its response to the scandal with a panel of three external lawyers since April. The company released a report on Tuesday.
The report says some workers at a plant producing the ingredient told investigators that when they reported the presence of blue mold inside the tanks culturing beni-koji to an official in charge of quality control, the official told them blue mold could be mixed with beni-koji to some extent.
The report also quotes some workers as saying that there was an instance when a dryer system broke down, leaving the beni-koji ingredient undried for a period of time.
The report says the quality control of the production line was mostly left to plant officials amid the constant shortage of workers, though it is not known if this was a cause of the problem.
The drug maker learned of multiple cases of health problems among users of its products from mid-January through early February, but it took the firm more than two months to urge the public to stop using possibly affected supplements.
The report says Kobayashi failed to think of consumer safety first. It says the firm should have shifted emphasis on publicizing the problem and recalling the products, starting in early February at the latest.
Kobayashi Pharmaceutical says it was slow in alerting consumers and recalling the products due to its insufficient awareness of product safety.
It says the firm will seriously accept the panel’s opinions, and work to win back consumer trust and rebuild the company.