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Six dietary supplements sold by Herbalife Ltd contain
dangerous amounts of lead 5-20-08
Herbalife disputed the claim, saying its products met with regulatory
requirements in all of its markets.
"The FDA hasn't established a general limit on lead in foods, but we are
certainly well within their suggested guidelines," Herbalife spokesman George
Fischer said in a telephone interview, referring to the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration, which sets dietary guidelines.
The Fraud Discovery Institute posted a letter on its website on Monday
attributed to Christopher Grell, an attorney in Oakland, California,
specializing in product liability.
The letter said that recommended daily doses of six Herbalife products contained
levels of lead that are dangerous and in excess of what California law allows
under its Safe Drinking and Toxic Environment Act of 1994.
The law requires businesses to warn consumers if their products contain
chemicals known to cause cancer or reproductive toxicity. An explanation of the
law can be found on the website of California's Office of Environmental Health
Hazard Assessment at http://www.oehha.org/prop65/law/P65law72003.html.
Barry Minkow, founder of the Fraud Discovery Institute, was not immediately
available to comment.
A San Diego pastor who served more than seven years in jail for stock fraud,
Minkow now works to uncover frauds. He has a history of criticizing Los
Angeles-based Herbalife, which sells weight-loss and nutritional products
through direct sales.
The six products mentioned in the letter on the Fraud Discovery Institute
website are the ShapeWorks Protein Drink Mix, Healthy Meal Nutritional Shake
Mix, Tang Kuei Plus herbal tablets, Thermojetics Nature's Raw Guarana instant
tea mix, ShapeWorks Cell Activator and Multivitamin Complex.
Herbalife shares closed down 4.2 percent at $40.17 on Monday on the New York
Stock Exchange.
In April, Herbalife said its president and chief operating officer, Gregory
Probert, had not finished his MBA degree as stated in his biography. The company
said Probert had been enrolled at California State University during the 1980's
but never obtained a degree.
At the time, The Wall Street Journal reported that Minkow had uncovered the
discrepancy about the degree, but on Monday Herbalife declined to comment on
that. The newspaper also reported that Minkow had "put" options in a bet that
Herbalife's stock price would fall.
The letter posted on Monday on the Fraud Discovery Institute website urged
California to order Herbalife to place "clear and reasonable warnings on these
products so that the consumer is informed that these products contain chemicals
known to cause developmental harm."
Grell said in an interview on Monday that individual tablets may not exceed
California's 0.5 microgram limit on lead in dietary supplements, but he said the
daily recommended dosage would result in lead exposure large enough to warrant a
warning label.
A document purported to be an invoice from Analytical Laboratories in Anaheim
Inc, based in Brea, California, for $5,820 for testing the six products was
posted on Fraud Discovery's website. Analytical Laboratories did not reply to
calls and an e-mail to discuss any tests.
Herbalife's market capitalization, after Monday's stock decline, was $2.61
billion, based on the number of shares outstanding as of April 28. It had sales
of $2.15 billion in 2007, according to its earnings statement.
The company's latest regulatory filing said its products are sold in 65
countries by a network of over 1.8 million distributors.
Last month, Herbalife said that Spain's Ministry of Health had issued an alert
cautioning consumption of Herbalife products due to suspicious cases of hepatic
toxicity, or liver damage, presumably associated with Herbalife products.
Herbalife said it was in discussions with the ministry.
"For more than 28 years, tens of millions of Herbalife consumers worldwide have
been safely using Herbalife products with an extremely low incidence of serious
adverse event reports citing liver function abnormalities," the company said at
that time.