All-One-Dollar Supplements

All-One-Dollar Supplements
by Loren Israelsen

Last week I stopped at the local dollar store looking for adeal. What I found was an endcap display offering Ginkgo biloba extract,glucosamine, garlic, St. Johns wort, multi-vitamins and much more for $1 abottle. Thats right$1 a bottle. I scrutinized the labels. The SupplementFacts Boxes said These products contain standardized extracts at thepreferred ratios, and the label copy was typical of what you would find atbetter health food stores. But, like most consumers, when I opened up thebottles and looked at the pills, I had no idea if what I was looking at was thereal deal. Unfortunately, this is just the tip of a far bigger iceberg thatpervades todays supplement industry, i.e., confusion about price, quality andthe true health benefits consumers are so eagerly looking for.

There is no other consumer product category that has a 10-foldretail price variance. Various brands of milk are not offered at prices ranging from$0.50 to $5.00 a carton. Nor are loaves of bread sold at prices from $2 to$20.Yet, this enormous price variance is typical within the supplement sector.What are consumers to believe? Perhaps they are beginning to believe thatdietary supplements indeed are not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration(FDA) or anybody else, and that there are no GMPs (good manufacturing practices)or product quality standards. Is a very recent SeattleTimes article correct when it calls dietarysupplements the wild, wild west of the pharmaceutical industry? How elsecan you explain the All-One-Dollar phenomenon?

The industry continues to wait for FDA to issue a final GMPregulation. No one should take comfort that FDAs political travails seem tobe bigger than our own at the moment, with the resignation of CommissionerLester Crawford and other top FDA officials, as well as accusations of sloppydrug safety review work. It is not a happy day for natural health consumers whenthe credibility of the supplement industry and FDA are at all-time lows. Having sunk to the one-dollar level, it is time to invoke theHarry Truman standard, The buck stops here. (Pun intended.)

The fact is,high quality research and rigorous manufacturing come at considerable costs. These costs are not simply raw materials, administrativeoverheads, profit and distribution margins, but include investments inanalytical method development, third party certification, organic and goodagricultural practices, robust inspection and auditing of suppliers, and findingand using the most competent contract analytical lab possible.

As 2006 quickly approaches, dietary supplement companiesshould review their upcoming operating budgets and make provisions for thefollowing:

There is one more change to consider. Move the purchasingdepartment compensation and incentives away from raw material price reductionsand towards measurable improvement of ingredient quality as a core incentive.Obviously this cannot be done unless the company has the expertise and technicaltools to measure product quality. It is an unpleasant truth that many buyers dontknow black cohosh root from canvas, but they do know how to say, Yourcompetitor is 30-percent less than you. By and large, buyers are doing justwhat they were told to do. That is the problem. If I found out that thecompanies making the foods, medicines, cars, appliances used by my family werecutting corners on quality and safety, they would lose my business immediately.I believe the majority of people in our industry feel the same. This just begsthe question: why would we do anything to jeopardize our relationship to ourconsumer?

Loren Israelsen is the executive director of the Utah NaturalProducts Alliance (UNPA), a 15- year-old alliance of many leading supplementcompanies that share a common vision of high standards of quality, safety,science and regulatory management for dietary supplements. Contact UNPA at (801) 474-2572 or www.unpa.us.

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