CRN, NAD extend partnership to review dietary supplement ads

NEW YORK What it means is a stronger dietary supplement industry sans criticism that the industry is rampant with hucksters trying to talk consumers into the miracle cure du jour. Why it’s important: Well, the industry generates some $6 billion in mass channel sales (food, drug and mass, including Walmart), up 7%, according to Nielsen data, and the more confidence consumers have in this category, the more likely they are to buy.

It’s also important because this initiative with NAD accomplishes two objectives — it roots out outlier companies hoping to cash in on a consumer’s ignorance with outrageous claims while at the same time vets claims made by legitimate supplement companies, companies that are much more likely to have supporting clinical studies to back their claims.

Pair this initiative with some other goings-on within the supplement industry, and you have an industry held in much higher regard than, say, five years ago. Those are initiatives like good manufacturing practices specifically written for the supplement industry, GMPs that require manufacturers to actually have the ingredients, and the quantity of those ingredients, that they claim to have in their formulas. That not only represents improved consumer confidence, but improved efficacy across categories may be a by-product as well. Initiatives like the mandatory reporting of serious adverse events, which will do as much to further excise outliers from the supplement community as it will to establish that legitimate supplements are generally safe.

And finally, you have some of CRN’s own initiatives that should further support consumer confidence in the industry. That includes CRN’s “Life … supplemented” consumer awareness campaign; the association’s survey of supplement utilization/recommendation across healthcare professional communities; and CRN’s regular dialogue with Congress leaders around the potential healthy impact supplements can have on reducing chronic disease states.