Ranbaxy Fake Data Mess Reaches Walmart as Union Finds Protest Toehold

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BNET Pharma provides daily industry trends and news coverage with insights for managers and executives about major manufacturers of pharmaceuticals and medicine. In addition to detailed drug company profiles, we bring you industry analysis on new partnerships, drug patents and products, cost management, investments, pharmaceutical related lawsuits, and a host of other important business issues.

The fallout from the FDA’s probe of Ranbaxy continues to spread, this time to Walmart. BNET noted in March that Ranbaxy, currently the most dysfunctional drug company on the planet, was caught faking data but the FDA was continuing to approve it drugs.

Now the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union is drawing attention to Walmart’s supply of generic drugs from the Indian generic giant. The union’s anti-Walmart site, Wake Up Walmart, has a detailed piece about Walmart and Ranbaxy. The site says:

Walmart’s use of a corporate bad actor to cut costs, however, deserves significant scrutiny.

The FDA banned imports from two Ranbaxy plants in 2008 and halted reviews of product from one Ranbaxy lab in 2009, the site says. Ranbaxy has also been the subject of attention from the Department of Justice and Congress.

The ongoing turmoil at Ranbaxy has thus far led the exit and replacement of its chairman, and an uncomfortable series of meetings with the FDA.

The company also missed a deadline for production of generic Nexium for AstraZeneca — a deal Ranbaxy had forced out of the company after launching a patent challenge.

Tags: FDA, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Ranbaxy, Federal Government, Government, Jim Edwards

Jim Edwards, a former managing editor of Adweek, has covered drug marketing at Brandweek for four years, and is a former Knight-Bagehot fellow at Columbia University's business and journalism schools. Follow him on Twitter or send him an email.

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