A lo­cal pas­tor yes­ter­day re­mained tightlipped yes­ter­day over al­le­ga­tions about the au­then­tic­i­ty of Sure Cure Ul­tra Omega's prod­ucts be­ing sold to the T&T pub­lic.The sit­u­a­tion de­vel­oped af­ter Unit­ed States-based or­gan­i­sa­tion Great Health­works raised con­cerns that the prod­uct was be­ing false­ly ad­ver­tised lo­cal­ly.The sto­ry was car­ried ex­clu­sive­ly on Mon­day by CNC3's ex­ec­u­tive pro­duc­er Samp­son Nan­ton, who jour­neyed to Flori­da to in­ves­ti­gate the is­sue.

In a let­ter dat­ed May 1 to the Health Min­istry, at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing Great Health­works raised con­cerns about the sale of the Omega prod­ucts lo­cal­ly.The let­ter stat­ed: "Our com­pa­ny is the own­er of Omega XL, an Omega 3 sup­ple­ment that is be­ing dis­trib­uted world­wide and has been ap­proved by the Min­istry of Health for dis­tri­b­u­tion in your coun­try.

"We are writ­ing to ex­press our deep con­cern for a prod­uct be­ing sold in your coun­try, Sure Cure that is mak­ing dis­ease med­ical claims with­out prop­er clin­i­cal sub­stan­ti­a­tion, while at the same time dis­parag­ing our Omega XL prod­uct."The Omega prod­uct be­ing ques­tioned is pro­mot­ed and dis­trib­uted by the pas­tor's or­gan­i­sa­tion.

The two-page let­ter, ad­dressed to Adri­an Mc Carthy, Food and Drug di­rec­tor at the min­istry, pro­vid­ed de­tails about the con­tents of the lo­cal­ly-based prod­uct and called on the min­istry to in­ves­ti­gate the claim."We are un­aware of any stud­ies re­gard­ing the in­gre­di­ents in Sure Cure that would sup­port the claims be­ing made in their ad­ver­tis­ing. We re­quest that your of­fices im­me­di­ate­ly in­ves­ti­gate Sure Cure and cause them to cease in this ac­tiv­i­ty and the mis­lead­ing ad­ver­tis­ing tak­ing place," the let­ter stat­ed.

"Phar­ma­cies in T&T should have the right to know the truth about Sure Cure so they can make an in­formed de­ci­sion whether to sell the prod­uct to the pub­lic."De­spite the warn­ing, the prod­ucts re­mained on the shelves of lo­cal phar­ma­cies.Great Health­works then hired a pri­vate in­ves­ti­ga­tor to check the com­po­si­tion of the Sure Cure prod­ucts by send­ing the Omega XL prod­uct and the Sure Cure tablets to IS­SI Lab­o­ra­to­ries Inc in New Jer­sey.

On Au­gust 20, Dr Yesu Das, of IS­SI lab, pre­sent­ed a re­port which found that while Omega XL con­tained 18 in­gre­di­ents, Sure Cure's Omega Ul­tra con­tained sev­en.The re­port, which was sub­mit­ted to David Bo­den, the ex­ec­u­tive vice-pres­i­dent of fi­nan­cial op­er­a­tions at Greathealth Works, stat­ed: "The la­bel claims of Sure Cure Omega Ul­tra could not be rec­on­ciled with its com­po­nents. The ex­pect­ed in­gre­di­ents (Omega fat­ty acids) are ei­ther at very low lev­els, or at be­low de­tectable lim­its."

The US-based com­pa­ny is re­port­ed­ly prepar­ing to take the mat­ter to the courts.At­tempts to con­tact the pas­tor for com­ment yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful. Some­one claim­ing to be his sec­re­tary said he was un­avail­able and would get a mes­sage on to him. A fe­male who an­swered his home phone al­so said she would pass a mes­sage to him but re­fused to di­vulge his where­abouts or give his cell­phone num­ber.