Dateline NBC!
The quality of supplements and the testing that goes on was the topic of a Dateline NBC exposé in March. The segment exposed the practice of dry labbing whereby research or analysis is claimed to be done, but in reality the conclusions are guessed at or copied from other sources without actually doing any analysis.
The segment was followed by an initial flurry of responses from industry and members of the analytical community, including FDA saying that it was taking the information seriously and would act appropriately, and the trade associations saying such practices were not representative of the industry.
Speaking recently with NutraIngredients-USA, Frank Jaksch, CEO of Chromadex, said: “Dry labbing has not gone away.
“It seems to have actually mushroomed in certain ways, and it’s changed in certain ways.
“We’re not seeing the same blatant dry labbing that was exposed in the Dateline piece.”
“The labs that were participating in this have metamorphosed into what I would call selective dry labs, meaning that they are not necessarily as blatant a practice as the lab that was exposed, they are now doing some dry labbing and a little bit of testing and trying to make it difficult for a company to pin it on them.”