July 19, 2011

Washington, D.C. - At the end of June, just before the sleepy holiday weekend news cycle, Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) introduced S. 1310, the Dietary Supplement Labeling Act of 2011. The bill is a response to recent marketing tactics by unscrupulous food companies intended to circumvent Food and Drug Administration standards.

The bill grants the FDA and the Institute of Medicine the power to compile a list of dietary ingredients that pose a potential health threat. And there's the rub. What are the measures by which an ingredient will be deemed to pose such a threat? And why give the FDA, an agency that has shown an anti-supplement bias in the past, the power to arbitrarily amass a list of "potentially dangerous" dietary ingredients, especially when there is already a system in place to ensure the safety of supplements?

Supplements are not drugs, and therefore, deserve their own system of regulation - and that's the point. Such a system already exists thanks to the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA), and it has done a more than adequate job protecting consumers largely due to supplement companies' compliance with, and support of, that system.

The FDA is already overburdened and understaffed, and has trouble keeping up with its existing responsibilities for policing pharmaceutical companies in their rush to receive permission to sell their hastily tested, potentially dangerous drugs. Now food companies are resorting to underhanded tactics and masquerading some of their products as supplements as a way of avoiding the FDA regulations intended for them, placing even more pressure on the FDA to do their job. The solution isn't to investigate supplements and dietary ingredients - it should be to investigate the food companies exploiting the system!

Put simply: At best, S. 1310 is a bad bill, albeit with good intentions. At worst, it uses parents' fear about what their children are consuming as an excuse to take another crack at imposing unnecessary regulations on the dietary supplement industry, which has demonstrated time and again its ability to ensure the safety of its products.

Take a moment now and use the form below to tell your Senators: Our... - vote "NO" on S. 1310!