One of the largest global dietary supplement retailers—Amazon—recently rolled out dietary supplement transparency and testing requirements. Does this position the ‘retailer as gatekeeper’ for quality across the global industry, or does it have the potential to falsely boost consumer confidence?
In this video, Joe Witte, host of the “Getting Transparent” podcast, dives into the requirements, the opportunities and the challenges facing the dietary supplement industry with three veterans. Anand Swaroop, CEO of Cepham, offers a perspective from the ingredient supplier and production side; Elan Sudberg, CEO of Alkemist Labs, brings out the continued challenges from the testing perspective; and TJ Gupta, CEO of TagOne, shares experience from the pharma industry fueling the potential use of technology to enhance security and transparency.
Among the issues addressed by the panel:
- This unique situation in which private industry is mandating standards, as there has been a lack of enforcement of the rules and guidelines in place at a federal level.
- Continued concerns about ‘testing by input,’ as well as a lack of clarity in the US supplement regulations related to appropriate methods for testing.
- The need for companies to actively manage their own supply chains, identify marker compounds and truly test in a way that supports understanding of the material.
- How strong, secure Certificates of Analysis (CofA’s) are marketing gold that haven’t been truly utilised appropriately in the past, but may become a new, unique way companies can brand themselves.
- Why increased interest in CofA’s could increase counterfeiting of the valuable documents, and how blockchain solutions could offer a new level of security.
Joe, Anand, Elan and TJ concur the move is pushing the current tolerance for sub-standard quality in a better direction; it’s not perfect, they agree, but it a good beginning with potential to support consumer health and safety and a global level.
