A drug is ultimately just another product, as far as manufacturing is concerned.\u00a0 It’s assembled according to standards, packaged, shipped, put on the shelves, and purchased.\u00a0 But where does Viagra start?\u00a0 Where does it go along the way?\u00a0 And who does what?<\/p>\n
It starts in Pfizer’s bulk production facility, which it operates in Ringaskiddy, County Cork, Ireland, along with other major drug manufacturers such as Novartis, GlaxoSmithKlein, Recordati, and Centocor.\u00a0 Just under 10 miles from the major port of Cork, the Ringaskiddy facility is responsible for putting together the bulk chemicals of the drug, using reagents, and disposing of the organic waste generated by creating the custom molecules, jobs that take 1,100 employees to handle.\u00a0 The waste adds up: for every pound of Viagra, three liters of organic waste is created.\u00a0 Viagra demand can run as high as 45 tons of the drug a year. The advent of generic competition will probably lower the demand for Pfizer’s little blue pill in the years to come.<\/p>\n
The locals at Ringaskiddy believe the fumes from the Viagra plant make them more sexually athletic and fertile.\u00a0 The birth rate in Ringaskiddy is a little higher, but Pfizer denies the fumes from the plant have any effect, especially since the plant has no chimney and releases no emissions.\u00a0 That hasn’t stopped two scripts from being written about Ringaskiddy<\/a>, including one optioned by Madonna for $2.6 million.<\/p>\n From Ringaskiddy, the bulk elements are shipped to production facilities in America and France in shipping containers.\u00a0 This is to prevent the finished drug from being stolen and sold on the black market, especially in the Third World, where counterfeit and stolen medication are booming business and 60 percent of the drugs for sale are counterfeit.\u00a0 Similarly, the exact location of these facilities is kept quiet to reduce thievery and hijacking.\u00a0 Stolen Viagra can be worth $20 or more per pill on the black market, and the raw ingredients can be worth even more.<\/p>\n At the production facility, the ingredients are combined and packaged. Included in each bottle is a\u00a0 tracking chip to verify quality and prevent forgery.\u00a0 Viagra is one of the most commonly counterfeited medications in the world, and the tracking chips help keep the percentage of fake medicine on the market lower than 1 percent in the developed world, according to the World Health Organization.\u00a0<\/a>Tracking tags are also attached to each case and each pallet of Viagra, and all of these tags will be checked before the medication is stocked.<\/p>\n From there, each package is shipped to warehouses in each country in which Pfizer sells pharmaceuticals, and then to individual pharmacies.\u00a0 At every port, the tracking tags are checked, right up until it reaches pharmacy shelves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A drug is ultimately just another product, as far as manufacturing is concerned.\u00a0 It’s assembled according to standards, packaged, shipped, put on the shelves, and purchased.\u00a0 But where does Viagra start?\u00a0 Where does it go along the way?\u00a0 And who does what? It starts in Pfizer’s bulk production facility, which it operates in Ringaskiddy, County […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23531,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_autoblog_aioseo_focus_keyphrase":"","_autoblog_aioseo_title":"","_autoblog_aioseo_description":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-viagra"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t