Consumer Product Enforcement Summary Report: Cosmetics

Cyclical Enforcement Project: Cosmetic Regulations

Fiscal Year 2014/2015

Summary

The Consumer Product Safety Program (CPSP) administers and enforces the Cosmetic Regulations under the Food and Drugs Act.

The purpose of this Cyclical Enforcement (CE) project was to verify compliance of cosmetic products which are subject to the Cosmetic Regulations.

For this project, the compliance of cosmetic products with the Cosmetic Regulations is determined through a sampling and compliance verification process by which Health Canada inspectors visit establishments and sample any relevant product(s). Compliance with the requirements set out in the regulations was not verified through testing at the Product Safety Laboratory.

Prior to initiating this CE project, the CPSP carried out a market survey to quantify the presence of cosmetic stakeholders in Canada. Targets were then selected from that list of companies. 

Over the course of the 2014/15 fiscal year, compliance verification of forty-two different products was carried out. The verification resulted in three recalls, two stop sales, thirty trader commitments, and seven instances where no corrective action was required.

Results

Readers should consult the individual recall notices for details of the products subject to this enforcement action.

The explanation of “Determination” for this CE project is as follows:

• “Notification” means that the product was not notified at the time of inspection.
• “Labelling” means that the labelling was missing, incorrect, incomplete or required modification to be compliant.
• “Hotlist” means that the product contained a hotlist ingredient which required follow up such as confirmation of the concentration in the product, addition of warning statements, submission of information or reformulation of the product.
• “None Identified” means that non-compliances related to notification and labelling were not identified.

Disclaimer: A systematic bias is applied during inspection and sampling. Products are not randomly selected but are chosen because they are deemed by the inspector to be more likely to not meet health and safety requirements due to characteristics that are observed.  Due to this biased nature of sampling and the fact that sample sizes within CE projects are very small, the findings of CE projects are not intended to reflect overall market compliance unless otherwise stated. Note that these summary reports relate only to the product(s) actually tested and the specific criteria indicated.  Testing by Health Canada does not represent approval or endorsement of the product(s).

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