The Public Relations Officer of the Food and Drugs Authority, Mr James Lartey has clarified that the COA Herbal Centre’s product, COA FS has been stopped from operating because of some harmful ingredients detected in the product, even before Anas Aremeyaw Anas’ expose concerning the product.

Investigative journalist, Anas Aremeyaw Anas indicted the COA Herbal Centre in his investigative piece for selling the COA FS product as a cure for the Coronavirus. The FDA did not approve of the product as a cure for the pandemic.

“What Anas expose said is exactly what we said. We issued a press statement and it brought so many problems for us. What we found out is what Anas also found out. We have closed his facilities and stopped him from operating,” the FDA PRO told GhanaWeb in an interview on June 30, 2020.

According to Mr James Lartey, Anas’ investigation and the FDA’s investigation on the product were conducted at different times, and the FDA was not aware of the initial stages of Anas’ investigation.

“Anas did his investigation, not in link with what we had done, we didn’t even know. But he is now coming out with what he found out. What he found out was exactly what we also found out,” he said.

He, however, added that COA FS was a registered product by the FDA, and for that reason, Samuel Ato Duncan the CEO of the COA Herbal Center could not be arrested because there was no criminalization involved in their operations.

“The FDA approved his product, though not for coronavirus, so his operation at the time was not a criminal offence. They are supposed to put some things in place that will prevent what caused the contamination, so when they restructure and do everything, they will get back to us. The product is an approved product, just that something went wrong, so we have to correct what went wrong,” he clarified.

He concluded that the authority will continue to clamp down on food and drug businesses that do not get authorization from the FDA before they operate.

“Once we see where an unregistered product is being sold, we will close them, we destroyed quite a number of his (COA FS) products on the market,” he said.