THIS BILL HAS BEEN DEFEATED. WE HAVE BEEN VICTORIOUS ONCE AGAIN!
If Arizona Senator John McCain has his way, many of the supplements you rely on for good health will disappear. And the cost of the few you can still get will explode in price. Earlier this month, Sen. McCain introduced a bill falsely labeled the “Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2010” (S. 3002). Sounds good, right? Nothing to worry about. McCain says: “Legitimate dietary supplement companies should have nothing to fear from this legislation. The purpose of the bill is not to create a sweeping regulatory structure, but instead a targeted structure that provides for openness, transparency, and safety.”
This bill would require every person involved with supplements—all the way down to mom-and-pop health food stores and multi-level marketing distributors—to register with the FDA. Next, every “dietary supplement facility” must turn over a complete list of the products and ingredients they sell or handle. It gets worse. Should this bill become law, the state will determine if an ingredient can be sold. You see, under DSHEA passed in 1994, any ingredient sold before the bill passed could be sold legally forever. Well, no more. Under this bill, the FDA will assume any ingredient is “adulterated” unless “there is a history of use or other evidence of safety.” Manufacturers and distributors must provide the FDA “with information, including any citation to published articles, which is the basis on which the manufacturer or distributor has concluded that a dietary supplement containing such dietary ingredient will reasonably be expected to be safe.” And guess who is the ultimate judge and jury? The FDA!
