Dietary supplement industry shares urgency in seeing FDA crack down

Your April 5 editorial, “An ‘utterly unregulated Wild West’: FDA needs more oversight of dietary supplements,” made a stern call for more responsible dietary supplement manufacturing and marketing, more stringent regulations, and better enforcement by the US Food and Drug Administration. But guess who agrees: the dietary supplement industry.

Your comments echo years of advocacy from responsible manufacturers, including members of the Consumer Healthcare Products Association. We agree with the need to keep illegal and dangerous products out of the marketplace and to penalize the “bad actors” through modernizing outdated federal regulations rather than a patchwork of stateby-state laws.

As the editorial notes, “some dietary supplements are valuable health aids.” Today, approximately 75 percent of Americans take a dietary supplement, and thousands of responsible manufacturers meet or exceed FDA guidelines and good manufacturing practices, providing safe and reliable products to meet growing consumer demand. But this growth has stretched the regulatory framework, allowing bad actors to sneak into the market and exploit consumers with adulterated or misbranded supplements posing risks to the public and tarnishing the entire industry.

Regulatory modernization for dietary supplements is an important public health issue. CHPA urges other stakeholders to help advocate for updated federal regulations and increased FDA resources to support more enforcement that reinforces safety and quality.

DUFFY MACKAY Senior vice president, scientific affairs and dietary supplements Consumer Healthcare Products Association

Washington, D.C.

The growth of the industry has stretched the regulatory framework, allowing bad actors to sneak into the market and exploit consumers.