Synutra Ingredients’s efforts to educate the industry about new adulterants in chondroitin are gaining traction, but the industry needs to apply effective testing methods and not just ‘pay it lip service’, says the company’s president.
Contract research organization KGK Synergize Inc. is broadening the scope of its expertise with the formation of a new company called GMP Auditing Partners and has named industry veteran Ed Wyszumiala as CEO.
Marketers of omega-3s talk a lot about freshness, but it’s not what the consumer understands with the term. It’s really about controlling oxidation and it can have a big impact on the sensory experience, experts say.
Algatechnologies Ltd. has announced an R&D deal with German company SCHOTT AG to boost the productivity of its closed-tube cultivation system at its plant in the Negev region of southern Israel.
Consumers are increasingly sensitive to where products are made, and this has helped drive NOW Foods’ expansion of its in-house manufacturing capacity, said CEO Jim Emme.
The presence of undeclared pharmaceutical ingredients in products purporting to be dietary supplements is garnering an increasing amount of attention and enforcement from the Food and Drug Administration, databases compiled by the American Herbal Products...
Pure Via labels will be amended, but 'natural' claim will stay
10 months after Cargill agreed to settle a class action lawsuit alleging it was misleading shoppers by marketing consumer products under the Truvia brand as ‘natural’, the firms behind rival stevia brand Pure Via have agreed to settle a similar lawsuit.
Bad news has acquired a long shelf life in the age of the Internet. Companies that are involved in regulatory actions, such as receiving FDA warning letters, need to develop a strategy to present their image going forward because the record of the warning...
As part of its ongoing effort to influence the implementation of the Food Safety Modernization Act, the American Herbal Products Association has submitted 30 pages of comments on the way FSMA calls for mitigation strategies aimed at preventing intentional...
The GRAS process as it stands in the United States is vulnerable to criticism based on possible conflicts of interest and low-quality safety work, said Claire Kruger, PhD, president of Spherix Consulting, a division of ChromaDex.
The Vitamin Shoppe announced this week that it plans to have all of the labels on products sold in its stores to be submitted to the National Institutes of Health Dietary Supplement Label Database. The move was welcomed by Steve Mister, president and...
The submissions of New Dietary Ingredient notifications seems as fraught as ever, and part of the issue is that regulators are not as communicative as they could be, according to Alex Schauss, senior director of AIBMR Life Sciences.
The Council for Responsible Nutrition took its ‘tale of two industries’ to Capitol Hill this week for senior level meetings and briefings with key lawmakers, with steroids, weight loss products, and smart prevention featuring on the agenda.
A new e-newsletter from a consortium of nonprofit herbal advocacy and research organizations will provide information related to the prevention and detection of herbal adulteration, quality assurance challenges facing the global botanical products community.
The growth of the sports nutrition sector has boosted the demand for NSF’s Certified for Sport certification, says Lisa Thomas, the program’s director. But the reach of the program extends well beyond products meant just for athletes.
Botanical adulteration, like doping in sports, is a problem that can be controlled but never totally resolved, but what is being done about it? Here the world’s biggest botanical players debate their attacks on the problem.
A lack of good laboratory practices specific to dietary supplements may be a hindrance in terms of assuring quality across the labs, but could the supplement industry come together to write its own?
The practice of ‘dry labbing’ continues in the dietary supplement space, but could industry attempts to produce a ‘trusted list of labs’ help companies make better decisions and stay GMP compliant?
Dry labbing and lab shopping are problems that persist in the dietary supplements industry, according to Frank Jaksch, CEO of ChromaDex. It is still all too easy for a company to get the results it wants, he said at a recent conference.
The Dietary Supplements Health and Education Act has given rise to a thriving dietary supplements industry. Botanical ingredients have always been a part of that picture, but the concept of where they fit within that category has shifted over the years...
The Natural Products Association (NPA) announced this morning that Daniel Fabricant, PhD, will succeed John Shaw as chief executive officer of the organization effective immediately. Shaw had tendered his resignation several days ago, the organization...
The upcoming Oxford Conferenece on the Science of Botanicals will have broader scope this year as part of a retrospective on the 20th anniversary of the Dietary Supplement Health and Eduction Act, said Ikhlas Khan, PhD, one of the conference’s main organizers.
A long time critic of the dietary supplement industry, Dr Pieter Cohen, MD, has called for a premarket approval regime and a modified adverse event reporting system for dietary supplements in an article published today in the New England Journal of Medicine. Industry...
Emerson Ecologics, which distributes a wide range of dietary supplements in the practictioner channel, has altered its quality program in a way that the company hopes will up the GMP compliance ante for its participating suppliers.
A key new hire has enabled consulting firm Ingredient Identity to signficantly ramp up its capabilities. In line with that development, the company has formed four new divisions to better present the new capabilities to its customers, said Jim Lassiter,...
The big three issues for botanicals of identity, adulteration, and solvent residue can be eliminated by controlling the supply chain from seed to shelf, says Ric Scalzo, CEO of Gaia Herbs
Updated: USP outlines its improvements for ginkgo testing
A new, simple method can address the problem of identifying adulterants in ginkgo biloba extracts, claim the scientists from Southern Cross University and Integria Healthcare in Australia who developed it.
Sustainable sourcing is a big buzzword these days, and companies have different methods for achieving that goal. One way to boost a company’s sustainability profile is to tap into a hidden pool of talent, namely the people who actually buy the stuff:...
The dietary supplements and functioanl foods industries have grown tremendously in the two decades since the passage of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994. After a period in which the industry split into various interest group segments,...
The Food and Drug Administration has agreed to new deadlines for final rules detailing the implementaiton of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). The agreement comes as part of a settlement in a lawsuit brought by advocacy groups claiming that FDA...
Three quarters of samples of Pharma Labs Inc's bodybuilding food supplement Esto Suppress have been shown to contain the breast cancer drug, tamoxifen, according to researchers.
Recent negative reports about the safety and efficacy of dietary supplements aren’t just a black eye on the industry. They represent a groundswell of public sentiment that could lead to the significant alteration of the Dietary Supplement Health and...
Organic claims and non GMO status can be challenging subjects for dietary supplement manufacturers. One aspect of that equation might have become a little simpler with the introduction of what the manufacturer believes to be the first organic clear coating...
Overlapping federal rules can sometimes create nooks and crannies that the originators didn’t intend. The Council for Responsible Nutrition has identified one such possible loophole in the interplay between the dietary supplement GMP rules (Part 111)...
With surging interest in the potential health benefits of polyphenols around the globe, experts suggest that there are still some major sticking points in the polyphenol success story.
A new method of measuring the heavy metal absorption capacity of foods and food and dietary supplement ingredients has been developed by researcher Mike Adams of the Natural News Forensic Lab. Adams says the method measures the ability of various food...
For the first time, the United States Pharmacopoeia is proposing a monograph on a probiotic organism as a food ingredient in the latest series of draft monographs put forward for inclusion in the Food Chemicals Codex.
Cases of sibutramine tainting in weight loss products are nothing new. But a recently-filed lawsuit drives home the real harm such products can cause, and the insidious way in which they have penetrated the marketplace.
Attorney Justin Prochnow has made a career of reading the FDA tea leaves for his clients. As the industry enters 2014, he sees a long-term trend of GMP enforcement and nascent guidances on New Dietary Ingredients and liquid dietary supplements as the...
By Michael McGuffin, President of the American Herbal Products Association
The American Herbal Products Association (AHPA) is planning for 2014 with the assumption that the hot button issues for the New Year are likely to include three of the same subjects that demanded our attention in 2013: cGMP compliance, GMO labeling, and...
Costa Mesa-based Alkemist Labs is expanding its testing capabilities into the omega-3 sector, with the success of its label claim verification/ R&D division allowing for continued reinvestment.
From warning letters to GMO labeling and FSMA, it’s been a busy year for the regulatory people. In this special gallery we review the top regulatory, policy & enforcement headlines from 2013.
The Council for Responsible Nutrition has suggested additional clarification of the risk-based controls portion of the Food Safety Modernization Act. The suggested clarification, submitted by CRN to the Food and Drug Administration as part of the public...
As dietary supplement firms prepare for their initial (or follow up) GMP compliance inspections, it pays to have the advice of a consultant and/or a lawyer up front. Fixing problems on the back end is inevitably more expensive, said attorney Ivan Wasserman.
DNA barcoding for botanicals has a bright future, despite comments that it may not yet be fit for purpose, and the next 2-3 years will see a ‘huge shift’ towards the ‘robust and reliable technology’, says the CEO of AuthenTechnologies.
One year on and 'GMPs' and 'concern' continue to be used together by Dr Daniel Fabricant, Director of the Division of Dietary Supplement Programs at the agency, with many of the compliance issues still basic.
The recent massive recall of products containing enzymes contaminated with an antibiotic points out the need for companies to think out recall procedures in advance, experts say.
Finished product testing has been predicted to be a key focus for regulatory enforcement as FDA inspectors gain more experience and move beyond the first tier GMP compliance issues, but much of the industry is not yet ready for this increased scrutiny,...
Sports supplement manufacturer USPLabs has recalled lots of its OxyElite Pro products after receiving a letter directing the action from FDA motivated by reports of liver illnesses in Hawaii associated with the product. FDA also it directed the recall...
I-522 is a victory for the proponents of GMO labeling, no matter how the final polls might turn out, attendees on a United Natural Products Alliance webinar were told yesterday.
