More than a year before the Federal Government announced its compounding ban, the pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk was making complaints to AHPRA about pharmacies compounding its semaglutide blockbuster drug.

The multibillion-dollar company — recently named the 12th biggest in the world — claimed that pharmacists were putting patients at serious risk and urged both AHPRA and the Pharmacy Board of Australia to write to all registered pharmacists and demand “the immediate cessation of this practice”.

The letter forms one of the documents, obtained by AusDoc under freedom-of-information (FOI) laws, revealing the campaign Novo Nordisk mounted in its attempts to halt the widespread production of untested versions of semaglutide.

Last month, federal Minister for Health and Aged Care Mark Butler announced that the TGA would ban the “commercial-like scale of production” for semaglutide, starting 1 October.