Conferences

A healthy diversity of different types of players and plenty of space for scaling up are among the reasons that investors remain interested in the consumer health sector, according to investment bankers speaking at the recent AESGP Annual Meeting.

The European OTC market grew at double the rate of the global market in the last twelve months, according to IQVIA Consumer Health, driven by a long-term trend for prevention. Consultancy Simon Kucher identifies a desire to live a longer, healthier life as the primary concern behind this trend.

Limited capacity and a two-to-three year timescale for reformulation could mean that many VMS supplements disappear from the market, warns EPPA partner Alexandra Bocquillion, speaking at the AESGP Annual Meeting in Warsaw, Poland.

If the European Commission is serious about improving the competitiveness of the European Union, it should ditch the idea of making commonly used OTC antimicrobials like thrush treatments and cold sore creams prescription-only, warns Greek Medicines Agency president Evangelos Manolopoulos

“It's really the elected officials who are making the final determination on what happens. They're really the owners of the teams, you guys in the industry are playing the game we’re refereeing,” FDA Commissioner Robert Califf says at Consumer Healthcare Products Association conference.

“We've had several citizen petitions. We can't ignore the data that are out there and are very new since the last time FDA had looked at this back in 2007,” says FDA OTC drugs office director Theresa Michele.

Class action litigants are increasingly bringing forward lawsuits targeting influencer marketing practices, says a Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP attorney during the IBA Cosmetics Convergence Conference Nov. 13.

State laws targeting the cosmetic and personal care industries have a sense of urgency, given the vacuum of action on the federal level, says the Independent Beauty Association during its Cosmetics Convergence Conference, which highlighted the new crop of laws, including a handful from California.

Consultants urge packaging producers to forecast and budget now for the fees of state EPR programs, particularly as fees from the Oregon program hit and surprise many firms and expose gaps in internal budgeting and planning. The topic was discussed at IBA’s Cosmetics Convergence 2025 conference.

The US cosmetics industry, particularly small- and medium-sized businesses, should reach out to their representatives in Congress to encourage pressure on the US Food and Drug Administration to implement cosmetics reform, despite agency staff cuts.

A panel session of the NAD 2025 Annual Conference tilted, ‘Review This – Compliant and Effective Use of Consumer Reviews,’ tackled pitfalls companies may face as they solicit or respond to customer reviews of their products on branded websites.

FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection Director Chris Mufarrige says the commission is vigorously enforcing consumer and competition laws but will not assume a ‘broader delegation’ of authority than granted it by Congress.

The National Advertising Division’s VP Phyllis Hurwitz Marcus and Head of Policy Mary Engle discuss the “vision for the future," during NAD's 2025 Annual Conference in DC Sept. 16-17.

The National Advertising Division of the BBB National Programs, Inc. closes two personal care ad claim challenges through its Fast-Track SWIFT Program in November, with the total number of assessments on that track in 2024 reaching 21.

The US FDA’s decision to move its long-awaited cosmetic GMPs rule to ‘Long-Term Actions’ under MoCRA likely delays a final rule for at least five years, raising the risk of increased state regulation and private litigation, say attorneys speaking during the 2025 PCPC Science Symposium & Expo

Attorneys presenting at the Personal Care Product Council’s 2024 annual meeting outlined measures beauty companies can take to protect their IP and combat counterfeiting operations. While marketing of sham products is not going to stop, companies can cultivate “a reputation within the counterfeiting community of being one of the brands that genuinely understands how to disrupt counterfeiters.”

The United Nations treaty on plastics pollution, considered ‘the most important climate deal since Paris,’ stands to have a direct impact on the cosmetics industry, potentially by targeting intentionally added nano-plastics in addition to microplastics in cosmetics, says attorney Melissa Kopolow, who spoke at the Personal Care Products Council’s annual meeting in Miami on 27 February.