Compounded GLP-1 Safety: OTP Filed a FOIA Request, Here’s What the Government Told Us

Original posted at obesity.news/ on Sep 13, 2025

For as long as I’ve been covering compounded GLP-1s, the answer to this one question has remained elusive: where are pharmacies actually getting their active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs)? The source of these raw ingredients has always been shrouded in mystery, and patient advocates like myself have spent years trying to untangle it. The question always comes back to one answer: industry trade secrets. This week, however, I did receive a little more info.

After submitting a Freedom of Information Act request, I received confirmation from Health and Human Services that the FDA has indeed deployed what it calls a “Green List.” This list identifies manufacturers and products that have been inspected and determined to meet FDA standards.

Here’s the frustrating confirmation: the names of those manufacturers and the specific APIs are redacted. The FDA classifies that information as “confidential commercial data”, essentially trade secrets. Unless a supplier chooses to voluntarily disclose its Green List status, patients and are left in the dark.

This confirms that pharmacies haven’t simply been stonewalling our requests for transparency, API sources are legitimately treated as trade secrets. But from a patient advocacy perspective, it raises a massive question: what good is a Green List if patients and prescribers can’t know whether their compounded medications actually come from those compliant sources?

I’ve already sent this question back to HHS, pressing them to explain how patients and pharmacies can verify compliance in practical terms. Because right now, a Green List that lives behind a veil of industry trade secrets does literally nothing to build trust for the people injecting these medications into their bodies every week.

The alarming stat that we learned last week from the FDA’s report, 72% of violations and actions taken by the FDA were on compound-exclusive API providers primarily in China and India. This all while they account for only 18% of our API supply.

We ought to know the reputable nature of the source of our medicine. For the OTP community, this is more than new FDA policy, it’s about having the assurance that what you’re injecting into your body is safe and effective. The reality for patients is, that clarity is still missing.

In the meantime, I strongly encourage you to ask your pharmacy whether they are sourcing from Green List vendors. Even if the list isn’t directly available to them, they should still be pressing their suppliers to disclose whether they are on it.

We deserve to know.

We’ll keep pushing until we do.

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