Greenie snake oil



Most Greenie claims are snake oil so the story below should not be too surprising

JAMIE PARKER, the man expected to become the Greens' first lower-house MP in NSW, was in charge of marketing at a natural therapies company that was repeatedly shamed by authorities for "misleading advertising" and "exploiting consumers". Mr Parker, who polls suggest will unseat Education Minister Verity Firth in Balmain, marketed products including FatBlaster, FatMagnet, Horny Goat Weed and Cholestaguard under the brand name Naturopathica.

An ad for FatBlaster, a weight loss treatment, included the line: "Quick! Call Green Peace [sic] - there's a beached whale."

Cat Media, the company behind Naturopathica, was the subject of 41 complaints upheld by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) between 2000 and 2006.

According to the pecuniary interests register at Leichhardt Council, where Mr Parker is mayor, he was marketing manager of Cat Media during that period.

A review of TGA decisions shows scathing comments, including this about the cholesterol treatment Cholestaguard: "Advertisements which were unbalanced and exploited the lack of knowledge of consumers, and could bring about fear of distress among consumers".

A FatBlaster ad was criticised for "misleading consumers into thinking that the product had been used successfully by well-known celebrities (just like Catherine Zeta-Jones and Posh Spice)". The company was also found to have used staff members to write supposedly independent reviews of products. Cat Media claimed falsely, according to the TGA, that its HangOver STOP could "stop a hang over".

Mr Parker denied that he was responsible for any of the breaches. "It wasn't my role to be putting together advertising and copywriting, I was positioning the stuff in pharmacies," Mr Parker told The Sun-Herald. "There were many directors. I had a small team of people doing things like graphic design. Yes, I've worked in the private sector, I'm not a union hack."

Mr Parker left Cat Media in 2006.

A Labor Party source said: "This is a tough contest for Labor, greatly helped by the fact that our opponent appears to be a snake oil salesman."

SOURCE

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