Health Canada-Keeping Us Honest and You Safe. One Product at A Time.
Today we met with Health Canada and learned a lot of interesting information about what it takes to sell cosmetics in this country.
As well as how few products comply.
They are meant to ensure that companies cannot out right lie to you and promise results that can’t be delivered, as well as to make sure that the ingredients are completely safe for you to use.
We are now re-assessing all 2000-ish of our sku’s to make sure we can stand behind the safety of all of our products. I think it may take awhile.
Here at Spa Boutique we always strived to give you as much information about the products as possible. We often use the products themselves coupled with the professional tech binders in order to give the low down on everything. Ideally you shouldn’t have any questions after you read our descriptions.
This may have now backfired a touch on us.
Essentially our products can fall under 3 categories:
- Drug
- Cosmetic
- Natural Health Product
It all comes down to the claims that the product makes. If it just effects the appearance of the surface of the skin it’s considered a cosmetic.
If it claims to effect deeper than the outer surface of the skin, aid in ridding of a condition (rosacea, acne, irritation) or protect the skin for UVA/UVB, these are considered therapeutic and are now Drugs. That means they require a DIN (drug identification number) on the front of the packaging to be legally sold in Canada.
Products containing ingredients of a natural origin with a therapeutic claim are NHP (Natural Health Products) and must have a Natural Product Number.
Without a DIN/NPN, the products can still aid the condition, they just can’t talk about it.
ALL cosmetics sold in Canada must submit a product notification form to Health Canada for every single product they sell. Health Canada then assess the ingredients and the claims to ensure everything is in compliance with our laws.
Having a DIN or NHN means they’ve already been assessed and been approved. Without one you cannot claim to treat acne,rosacea, or fungus along with a much longer list of claims.
The information that we provide are the claims made by the companies on the packaging, and Health Canada very rarely looks at packaging unless someone complains.
They claims may be completely valid and be allowed to be mentioned in other countries, but unless they pass the strict rules implemented by Health Canada they actually can’t talk about them, or they have to go through the process of getting a DIN; which can take up to a year. So we have to re-do a good portion of our descriptors.
It will be a simple change in verbiage, but the quality results of the products will remain. Otherwise we can’t carry them!
So you will be seeing some changes to the products we carry and how we talk about them from now on. Luckily most of our lines have already gone through some-if-not-all the necessary steps, but there’s still some work to be done. We may loose some favorites, or some juicy little tidbits about how a product works or what it can do may be removed. It all depends on our manufacturers and the steps they’ve taken. Even if they’ve just submitted the form, it’s still ok for us to sell the product until Health Canada assesses it.
It will take us awhile to go through the change, but it will be worth it. At the end you can be sure that the products we carry will be safe and effective, as long as the manufacturer keeps up to date with re-formulations.
You can see all of Health Canada’s regulations regarding the Cosmetics Act here.
Let us know what you think!
Visit www.spaboutique.ca to see all the great Spa brands we carry for skin, hair and makeup
Tags: cosmetic regulations, DIN, Drugs, Health Canada, Natural Health Products, NPN
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