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Originally Posted by ianch99
Did you see the link I posted here? It is an interesting article fact checking Sir Michael Rawlins warning. It would be interesting to know you thoughts on it .. |
Sorry for the late reply, I have been travelling and a bit out of touch. Thanks for the article, it was very interesting. Bit of an error there on the animal insulin. 0.3% of insulin is made in the UK is a small but significant amount. I know the other three suppliers well in my day to day work and they are huge, especially Novo Nordisk in the insulin world (Novo sponsors a diabetic cycling team so a nice crossover of my work and leisure time)
For some products, the papaerwork and even the formulations can differ by region. An EMA (EU) approval process can be very different to an FDA (US) one. EMA approvals are often of a more modern risk based type as opposed to a more proscriptive FDA one. It may well be the case that we could import products from outside the EU if the suppliers have the capacity. Capacity is driven by demand and expanding capacity in the bio pharmaceutical field is not cheap, easy or quick. Could a supplier back up the UK demand for insulin overnight? Probably not. Would that insulin be acceptable to the UK market from a regulatory point of view? Not sure to be honest.
If we were to accept EMA approved drugs in a ‘pharmaceutical single market’, this would help but if we are trying to gain back our sovereignty, turning over our drug approvals process to a foreign organisation seems a bit odd.
On the time to go through customs. This is rolled out quite a lot. Though not in the case of pharmaceutical cold chain supply, deliveries from the EU can very very mixed on the same container as no inspections are required. If we go no deal, then sifting through containers becomes a big problem. It’s not just the quantity but the quality of deliveries that matters. There will be delays for sure. We had 28000 customs, VAT and excise officers in 1992 and this was reduced to 16000 post CU/SM. Dover had 2000 officers alone! In the meantime, 400% more vehicles cross the channel than in 1992 so we are going to need a lot more customs officers to stick to,our current performance, especially in more EU trade centric ports. Hence the pessimism on the efficiency of imports of cold chain drugs such as insulin.