Dollar Tree is being accused of importing potentially unsafe drugs from China despite being warned by the FDA

• The FDA issued a warning letter to Dollar Tree this month alleging it continued to receive potentially unsafe over-the-counter drugs that were made by manufacturers in China and sold under the Dollar Tree label.
• These manufacturers were found by the FDA to have violated federal law for not sufficiently testing products. A spokesperson for the FDA told Business Insider that Dollar Tree was "previously warned" about these manufacturers.
• A spokesperson for Dollar Tree did not respond to several requests for comment on whether it knew that these manufacturers had violated federal laws. However, the spokesperson said it was cooperating with the FDA.
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The FDA has issued a warning letter to Dollar Tree alleging it imported potentially unsafe over-the-counter drugs, despite receiving prior warnings from the FDA.

In a letter sent out earlier this month, which was addressed to Dollar Tree's CEO Gary Philbin, the FDA outlined several manufacturers and suppliers that it said had violated federal laws by not sufficiently testing products and in one case, for "rodent feces found throughout the manufacturing facility."

Dollar Tree told the FDA that if a warning letter was issued to any of its suppliers it would not purchase products from them. But the FDA said that this was "not always the case" and alleged that Dollar Tree was copied into warning letters sent to its suppliers but continued to import items after. A spokesperson for the FDA confirmed this in a call with Business Insider.

The agency also said that at "various points in time, [Dollar Tree] used contract manufacturers and suppliers with histories of significant drug CGMP [Good Manufacturing Practice] violations."

A spokesperson for Dollar Tree did not respond to Business Insider's requests for comment on the allegation that it imported these products after being copied into warning letters. However, a spokesperson said the company is cooperating with the FDA and stressed that none of these items are "ingestible."

"We are committed to our customers' safety and have very robust and rigorous testing programs in place to ensure our third-party manufacturers' products are safe. Each of the items referenced in the report are topical, and not ingestible, products," he said.

The warning letter only lists one of the products that was deemed unsafe. This was Acne Treatment Pads, which it said were produced by the Shanghai Weierya Daily Chemicals Factory.

The FDA is now calling for Dollar Tree to provide "a detailed plan" to show how it will prevent this from happening again and how it intends to audit its suppliers in the future.

Dollar Tree, which also owns Family Dollar, was in the news last month after it was hit with a $1,900 fine for failing to prevent a rodent infestation at one of its stores in Portland, Oregon.