CRN President & CEO Steve Mister hit the road in February, visiting with members, prospective members and other stakeholders to discuss three major initiatives under consideration—an industry-administered dietary supplement registry; voluntary good manufacturing practices (GMPs) for botanical raw materials; and a standardized third-party certification process. CRN is spearheading the proposed registry, investigating particulars, seeking support and preparing to take a proposal to CRN’s Board of Directors later this month.
The Product Registry for Dietary Supplements would provide consumers, retailers and regulators will detailed information about the products and create a unique alpha-numeric code for each product in the database. Mr. Mister spoke about the registry at the UNPA Raw Materials & Supply Chain Summit and in his presentation noted ten principles for the registry. It must be:
- Industry Initiated
- Broadly Implemented & Supported
- Widely Available to the Industry
- Tiered for Companies who want more...for a price
- Informative about the product (e.g., unique identifier)
- Consumer Facing, with additional access for B2B and FDA
- Iterative/Modifiable
- Rapid to Launch
- Compatible with Continued Support of the ODS DSLB
- Portable, ultimately accountable to the industry, not the vendor
CRN’s Board is exploring a long-term solution using the CRN Product Transparency Working Group framework as a guiding document and members should expect Board action in March, Mr. Mister said.
Another initiative with potential to impact the dietary supplement industry is GNC’s proposed GMP guidelines for botanical raw materials, which is being touted as part of a strategy to restore confidence in dietary supplements (read more on CRN’s Members Only website). The guidelines are built on a foundation of the work of groups including the American Herbal Products Association (AHPA), the American Herbal Pharmacopeia, the World Health Organization (WHO), Health Canada and the CRN-led SIDI Work Group. CRN’s Steve Mister said in NutraIngredients.com’s coverage of the guidelines, “We’re excited about this. We’re happy to see momentum building around improving quality. I’m looking forward to having a chance to take something like this to our board and have a chance to review it and perhaps bless it.”
The third major industry initiative under discussion is the standardization of the inspection process of third-party certifiers (such as the U.S. Pharmcopeial Convention, NSF International, and UL) who certify compliance with cGMPs. Many dietary supplement companies as well as retailers who have to evaluate which product to place in their stores, hope to harmonize documentation processes and establish uniformity in the certification landscape regardless of which certifying body conducts the evaluation. A separate NutraIngredients.com article noted CRN, AHPA and UNPA were in accord on these self-regulatory initiatives and quotes Mr. Mister on the third-party certification initiative. Read more in CRN in the News.
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