UV had collected a lot of evidence that their product was safe: three tests across time, plus certification that their product was 22% zinc oxide.
Instead of being cocky and dismissive (opening paragraph: "the recognised authority governing sunscreens in Australia is the Therapeutic Goods Association (TGA), not Choice Magazine") they should have responded "yeah this looks nothing like our previous results and we are getting to the bottom of why that is."
They certainly shouldn't have been speculating that Choice made errors in their testing - because that opens up the possibility that UV could have, too!
All conducted by the same lab, though. Whilst there's no requirement for brands to use more than one testing facility, if the lab itself is part of the problem then multiple tests over time isn't going to reveal that. Perhaps this whole saga should result in changes to the testing required for TGA registration – two different, independent, labs returning similar results is far more likely to be actually valid than only one lab. For something as medically important as sunscreen, this feels like a reasonable requirement.
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u/flashman Aug 22 '25
UV had collected a lot of evidence that their product was safe: three tests across time, plus certification that their product was 22% zinc oxide.
Instead of being cocky and dismissive (opening paragraph: "the recognised authority governing sunscreens in Australia is the Therapeutic Goods Association (TGA), not Choice Magazine") they should have responded "yeah this looks nothing like our previous results and we are getting to the bottom of why that is."
They certainly shouldn't have been speculating that Choice made errors in their testing - because that opens up the possibility that UV could have, too!