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Do you think the US cosmetic industry needs more regulation?
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@grapefruit22 - Certainly, regulations that reduced the chances of someone getting injured by a homemade product could help. But the philosophy that rules in the US is that we want the minimum amount of rules so as not to inhibit innovation.
Plus, more rules means more enforcement which means a growth of a government agency. That costs money. Again, that’s not encouraged in the US.
And if there is not a huge, measurable problem, spending lots of money to prevent it may not really make sense.
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Interesting topic.
mikethair said:we have found barriers to entry to the USA almost non-existent. And the EU is very strict in our experience. And the same for the Japanese brands we manufacture.Totally agree on this, this maybe one of many reasons why so many weird stuff from China can be found and bought online and offline, well to be fair, weird stuff can be found anywhere around the globe.
PhilGeis said:Wrong. Retailers’ priority lists ARE responsible. In US and EU. Sephora, Target Walmart, etc - all encourage use of garbage preservative systems.I have to agree on this.
As for handcrafts or homemade.
Honestly I don’t see a solution for this issue if it were to be pushed to state-level government, I am quite positive it be would become politicized and somehow make things more complicated. -
There certainly are barriers for import of cosmetics. e.g. https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cms_ia/industry_53.html
Some ports of entry are known to be more demanding than others.
I’ve successfully argued with FDA such cases for clients.
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The primary risk for cosmetics is microbiological, not chemical. Hobbyists, flea marketers and the like will always do as they wish and FDA will never have resources to address their issues even if they knew what to do.
Significant/magnitude risk (as recall) is realized in small to midsized operations as a function of poor, politically-correct preservation and half-assed manufacturing hygiene. There is no mechanism to assess in use contamination but that is even greater with poor preservation.
Virtually every recalled product has passing preservative testing data and “GMP’s”
Legislators know nothing of the industry (witness classic PAO idiocy). EU (and proposed US legislation) merely establishes a paperwork confirmation, addiung no effective value. Big cosmetic writes most of the text at the fed level and little guys are usually exempted or greatly limited/delayed for enforcement. Some states (e.g. California) are more influenced by the chemophobes and their crazy stuff is typically very focused (bans of micro plastics, PFAS, formaldehyde releasers, parabens, whatever).
FDA regulations and enforcement based on legislation is the reality - not legislation per se. The Agency is focused on drugs and vaccines (CDER), Cosmetics are regulated as secondary priority by the foods guys (CFSAN).I represented P&G for over a decade at state and fed level for cosmetics and other issues. In the big legislation/regulation picture, cosmetics are a secondary if not tertiary concern. Folks might look at the original FD&C act history to understand dynamics involved in such regulation - https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1937&context=lcp
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@Perry Yes, recently I also had thoughts that there are a lot of such products and sellers in the US, because they have many customers and people are willing to buy these handcrafts, even if they can buy such a product in a store at a similar price. After all, in the EU you can also easily buy cosmetics ingredients and make them yourself, so it doesn’t make much difference whether you buy the ingredients and make the product yourself at home, or buy a product made at home by someone else.
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