Angry in the Great White North

So far, Health Canada says that the suspect toothpaste found in Canada is not the same as the diethylene glucol tainted product discovered in the Unites States:

Health Canada officials on Wednesday said they were continuing to test suspect toothpaste but noted that none of the samples collected so far have matched counterfeit Colgate products found in the U.S. last week.

"At this point, the samples that we have collected — none of them were identical to the samples that were collected by the U.S. FDA," said Jean Saint-Pierre, a compliance officer with Health Canada.

Now Health Canada is not saying the toothpaste is good, nor is it saying it is bad. Just not the same as the samples collected by the FDA. Could have more DEG, could have less, could have none at all.

I'm banking on the last, and here's why.

One thing I haven't emphasized is that the text appearing on the box is the same as on the tube, except for the spelling mistakes, which appear on the box but not on the tube.

Now why would a counterfeiter mess up one half of the fake product, that is, the outer boxes? Especially since that is what a consumer will see first?

The obvious explanation that only one half of this product is actually counterfeit.

Imagine that for some reason, a legitimate run of Colgate toothpaste is to be thrown away. Perhaps there was a minor problem with the formulation, or perhaps it was just a tail end of a run that was in excess of the planned production. Nothing wrong with it, but no longer required. But instead of being destroyed, someone grabs the doomed toothpaste tubes and decides to sell them on his own. Or maybe it's simpler than this -- these are legitimate tubes, though not destined for Canada, that have simply been stolen from a Colgate production facility. Or maybe the run was extended by someone with some authority in order to create tubes to be sold illegitimately.

However it happened, our thief has thousands of ill-gotten tubes that need to be packaged. Our thief pays for a run of fake Colgate cardboard boxes, using the text on the tube to make the boxes appear legitimate, covered in the marketing text we all expect to see. But why put "Made in South Africa" on the boxes, when the tube doesn't actually name a point of origin? I don't know. That might become clear once the full story is known. Perhaps it was to hide the true origin of the tubes. Perhaps the tubes were supposed to be sold in Africa, but some mistakenly made it to North America.

In any case, the copy is sloppy, or perhaps a non-English speaker unfamiliar with the Roman alphabet doesn't spot the difference between an "i" and an "l", both vertical strokes to his eye. Placing the real tubes of toothpaste in the fake (and flawed) boxes, the shipment enters the supply chain and ends up in Guelph, and then on my desk.

It is not unlike the theory proposed by the John Birch Society, though I don't assign any liability to Colgate here. I have the benefit of being able to study the tube and the box carefully, and long ago noted the curious difference in textual accuracy between them. If Colgate's product was stolen, then Colgate is the victim here as well, but we can at least expect that the toothpaste is not dangerous. It still doesn't address the problem that Canadians are not supposed to be using this product, of course.

So why are the US samples testing positive for DEG? If the Canadian samples are not, and Health Canada seems to be suggesting that, we can only surmise that the tubes were sourced differently. Perhaps there are two counterfeiters at work, using different lots of toothpaste and making different spelling mistakes on the cardboard packaging. But then if the US samples are tainted, then that strongly suggests that the entire product is counterfeit, and not just the cardboard packaging.

Still, this is just a theory.

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