Safe packaging will cost millions

Press, 27 November 1986, Page 5

Safe packaging will cost millions

NZPA-Reuter Chicago Four years after a maniac killed seven people in Chicago by dumping cyanide into capsules of a popular pain remedy, the search for safety in packaging is costing American consumers millions of dollars. Shoppers are paying extra for products which are sealed, wrapped and capped to discourage random tampering. Still hardly a month passes without a new threat of what officials in Illinois recently termed “consumer terrorism” — the anonymous threat that can force a manufacturer or retailer to yank products from store shelves by the thousands.

The person who sabotaged capsules of ExtraStrength Tylenol with cyanide in 1982 has never been caught. A ,SUSIOO,OOO reward has gone unclaimed. Tylenol and many other non-prescription drugs which previously were in the form of capsules are now being sold as pills which are less vulnerable to tampering. And the non-prescrip-tion drug industry estimates it has spent between a half billion and one billion dollars to institute tamper-resistant packaging, according to the Proprietary Association, a trade group which represents the SUSB billion a year business.

The cost figure includes new equipment, production modifications, literature and in some cases new plant construction. But the drug industry — first hit and first to react — is not alone. - “It has become a part of every project we work on, a part of the criteria for every new package or for addressing existing packages,” said Howard Alport, a package safety expert. “For some it was an issue prior to 1982, but not nearly to the degree it is today. It was an issue but not the first one on everyone's list,” said Mr Alport, senior vice president of Lipson-Alport-Glass and Associates, a package design firm with offices in Northbrook, Illinois, and Cincinnati. “But we have to make a distinction,” he said. “It’s not really practical to make tamper-proof packaging. The industry is trying to make tamperevident packaging — the kind that is obvious when something has been done to it.”

Mr Alport’s firm has done work for Beatrice, Borden, Kraft, Pillsbury, Quaker Oats and other manufacturers.

He said the cost of tamper-evident packaging could be anywhere from two to five cents a unit. Methods range from such simple measures as stronger glue on package flaps, to shrink films which encase the entire

product in plastic wrap. Some products now have metal caps on which an impression will pop up if the seal has been broken. “I think you’re going to continue to see instances of tampering, but hopefully it will happen to a lesser degree,” Mr Alport said. "The industry will continue to make this (safety) an ongoing part of their packaging and production process. “The best we can hope for is that the consumer will become more aware of it and it will become part of every day shopping,” he said. A spokeswoman for the Proprietary Association, said, “There is no such thing as tamper-proof packaging. The consumer will always have to be alert to anything that might be wrong with a consumable product.”