A pharmaceutical testing laboratory brewed up some trouble with the Food and Drug Administration by sharing its space with a microbrewery.
The FDA issued a warning on Aug. 29 to Pharmaceutical Laboratories and Consultants for several manufacturing quality violations, the most notable of which was that the company’s testing laboratory was too close to a microbrewery.
The Illinois-based company is a contract testing facility, with which drugmakers sometimes contract to test the quality of their products and to submit such data to the FDA for approval.
FDA came to the facility in Sept. 2017 for an inspection, and found several routine deficiencies, such as not having proper records or improper training procedures for staff.
But in an odd turn of events, the agency also found that the company’s pharmaceutical testing area was overlapping with beer brewing.
“A brewery employee was also preparing beer kegs in this area,” the FDA noted in the letter to the company, which was recently posted online by the FDA.
Inspectors also found that drug testing materials, brewing materials, and open beer bottles were stored in the same refrigerator.
“Conducting your testing operations in a shared space with a microbrewery is inappropriate,” the letter said.
The company could not be reached for comment.
[Also read: World Health Organization calls for restrictions on alcohol]
