RX Border Defense’s Dr. Michael Burgess is calling on lawmakers to seriously overhaul or get rid of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) “green list” for weight loss drug ingredients coming into the U.S. from foreign countries, warning it leaves Americans vulnerable to unregulated mystery pharmaceuticals from overseas.
Burgess, a physician and former Republican congressman from Texas, joined Breitbart News Washington bureau chief Matthew Boyle on Tuesday for a conversation on border security and public safety in front of a live audience in Washington, DC.
As weight loss drugs such as Ozempic, Mounjaro, Wegovy, and Zepbound (also known as GLP-1s) increased in popularity – a surge Burgess notes as a positive, because these drugs are effective and they are approved by the FDA and manufactured under its oversight – the country began to see a shortage of them. A recent Gallup analysis found that the portion of American adults currently taking GLP-1s for weight loss rose to 11 percent in 2026, up significantly from 3 percent in 2024.
Due to shortages of the medication, some people began seeking out the active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) in GLP-1s from unapproved manufacturers. To alleviate the problem quickly, the FDA rolled out a “green list” of pre-approved manufacturers in other countries that could import their drugs into the United States without going through traditional customs methods that other foreign drugs go through.
A September 2025 press release from the FDA stated that manufacturers on the list were “inspected or evaluated” and “appear to be in compliance with the FDA’s rigorous standards.”
That list includes facilities across Europe and Asia; China is the most heavily represented country by far.
Earlier this year, one of the Chinese manufacturers on the FDA green list was caught sourcing an unapproved API known as semaglutide from a facility that was not on the list, and putting its own label on it before shipping it to the United States.
The manufacturer, called Harbin Jixianglong Biotech, is also accused of altering manufacturing and retesting information before the product was used by patients across the United States.
Speaking with Boyle, Burgess made the case why that should never have been allowed to happen.
“This [the green list] allowed for companies just to be waived through. Remember, Reagan always told us, ‘Trust, but verify,’” the physician stated, before decrying the “bad actors” out there who are “able to exploit a perceived weakness or loophole.”
“That’s unfortunately what may have happened,” Burgess continued. “There was product that came into the country under the green list that actually was produced in a separate location, and it wasn’t caught before the fact; it was caught after the fact, and that’s a vulnerability for American patients.”
Despite the FDA revising its “shortage” classification of GLP-1 and the APIs needed to make them, the green list is still allowing foreign companies to ship drug ingredients into the United States with little to no oversight.
Burgess stressed that consumers using well-known brand names of GLP-1s manufactured under FDA supervision have no cause for concern. The issue is foreign-made “counterfeits” passed off as being from approved sources. Burgess stated that the green list “should be done away with” because “we no longer need it,” as we no longer have a shortage of GLP-1 ingredients.
Boyle drew a comparison to the 2008 heparin contamination crisis, when American company Baxter International subcontracted the manufacturing of precursor chemicals needed to make blood thinners to Scientific Protein Laboratories, another American company with production facilities in China.
Scientific Protein Laboratories used counterfeit materials and shipped them off to Baxter, which sold the heparin made with them to Americans. Nearly 800 people were severely injured, and 81 people were killed due to this dishonesty and negligence.
“This is something that Congress needs to stay on top of,” Burgess said in a direct plea to his colleagues still on Capitol Hill. “They simply cannot outsource this. They can’t let somebody else do it. They must do it themselves.”
Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram.
