SensaSlim all clear to peddle its wares

DESPITE controversial weight loss company SensaSlim being prepared to destroy the last of its stock after its product was delisted by the TGA, the authority has given the company the all-clear to sell its wares, MO has learned.

Correspondence between SensaSlim spokesperson Peter Ralph and the TGA, obtained by MO, shows that after forcing the company to abandon much of its business activities the TGA this month advised the company it was in fact entitled to keep selling its diet weight loss spray under certain conditions.

It comes even though the TGA deregistered SensaSlim and banned it from advertising, manufacturing, importing or exporting its products because of an alleged failure to justify its efficacy claims.

Mr Ralph told MO he asked the TGA in November whether, despite its actions, he was allowed to sell $40,000 of remaining SensaSlim stock and was told six months later – as he was preparing to dispose of the product – that he could.

An email from the TGA’s Office of Product Review to Mr Ralph, dated 4 May, said the watchdog deregistered the product because of advertising breaches, not nonconformance with “applicable standards” and therefore had “no grounds to consider you would be in breach of these requirements if you were to supply SensaSlim”.

The email also said that if SensaSlim did not advertise, “sanctions would not apply”.

Activist academic Dr Ken Harvey said it was “yet another flaw in the TGA regulations...  that people can continue to sell, and make a profit [from] a product that has been shown to be fraudulent”.

The TGA did not respond to MO’s queries by press time.