A European Union plan to tighten drug packaging rules in a bid to stamp out counterfeits has triggered a row between makers of big name medicines and those producing cheap generics, who argue the costs will be crippling.
Bogus drugs are rare in Western markets but a spate of high-profile cases in Europe, including the recent discovery of fake versions of Roche's injectable cancer drug Avastin en route to the United States, have fuelled concerns.
The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, is addressing the issue with a directive requiring medicines to be sold in tamper-proof packs from 2016, each with a unique identifier allowing them to be tracked through the supply chain.
The idea has been welcomed by companies like Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline and Roche that make expensive patented medicines, since the move is likely to reinforce the reliability of their brands.
But Greg Perry, director general of the European Generic medicines Association (EGA), contends it is an unnecessary burden on generics companies, whose low-cost products are anyway of no appeal to criminal counterfeiters.
"Makers of expensive branded medicines can absorb these technological costs because they have far higher margins and their products are the ones being counterfeited," he said in a telephone interview.
"For us, it is a very different ball game ... there is not a single case of counterfeited generics being found in the EU legal supply chain."
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